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angelicamerlinbarnes · 3 years

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TUA MEAN GIRLS AU

(please understand that by AU, I mean they share an incredibly small amount of things in common with the original source material which I barely remember BUT the “story” takes place in the setting of the film) (not to be misleading or anything :p)

(BEWARE: abuse, bribery, immoral deals, bullying, homophobia, outing, transphobia, violence, abortion, teen pregnancy, etc.)

(If you can handle watching Umbrella Academy, this will be fine for you.)

(Regina) Five is the king of this school, and he has no plans to give up that position. He needs it to protect his people, as few and far between as they are, and himself, if he’s honest - he’s a trans and ace-aro kid in platonic love with the health class mannequin who he calls Dolores. Ruling with fear is basically all he can do. While he’s mean, you’ll soon realize that everything he says is more of a blunt observation that will improve your life if you just heed his advice. He doesn’t respect almost anybody - not the jocks, theatre geeks, nerds, cheerleaders, band kids - no one. However, if he does respect you, you have his trust and protection. And as a thirteen-year-old genius who only takes advice from always-slightly-drunk art teacher Agnes, his protection is pretty damn valuable: the last person who tried to hurt one of his people will never walk again. Leonard Peabody - he assaulted Vanya, and he paid. Five beat him to the point of hospitalization without getting a single speck of blood or bruise on himself, and Leonard’s the one who walked away in handcuffs. Do not fuck with any of Five’s people, or you have to fuck with Five. And you do not want to fuck with Five.

(Gretchen) Vanya is quiet and subdued, to the point where people question how she’s a part of the school’s most popular trio. If you talk to her for long enough though, it becomes clear: she knows any and everybody’s secrets. She writes for the school paper, and is known to write the stories her subjects don’t want anyone else to find out about. Like Diego, who she outed as bisexual last year to throw people off the trail of her own secret relationship with Sissy, earning her an ex-girlfriend and an ex-friend. She’s been trying to win Diego’s forgiveness ever since, but he won’t talk to her, returning every single one of her letters and gifts. (He’s blocked her number and all of her socials, which she only created to talk to him anyway.) She doesn’t know why Five keeps her around - Klaus loves to gossip, but Five never seems to want any of her secrets. She’s pleasantly surprised to find out that he apparently actually enjoys her company. (What?)

(Karen) Klaus is a fucking mess. He plays the dumb blonde (well, brunette) despite being a genius in his own right, even if he’s not at Five’s level. (To be fair, he’s pretty sure no one is.) He’s a drag queen on the weekends, a hangover from his time in the mafia gang, which he joined with his boyfriend Dave for six months after running away from home. Dave died in a gunfight, and Klaus has been fucked up (well, more than usual) ever since. Anorexia, PTSD, anxiety, depression, self-harm, suicidal ideation, the works. But as lonely as he is, addicted to a fuckton of hard drugs and liquors to cope, he’s still an alluring, aloof, and bubbly popular girl, wearing pink skirts and glittery heels and leather corset crop tops to school every day. No matter how much his father Reginald beats him for it, he keeps being himself, because he’s brave and because even if Reginald hates him, someone far more important loves him… Diego. Diego, who Klaus has kissed under a million stars and in the lollipop shop down the road and on top of a cafeteria table. Diego, who Klaus has chased through the rain and into the street without rest or hesitation. Diego, whose words and promises and scribbles are immortalized on Klaus’ skin for all to see. Diego, who Klaus will love no matter how much bigotry they encounter or dickwads they’re beat up by or miles they put between them. Diego, Klaus’ ex-boyfriend.

(Cady) Allison is the new girl, and she has plans for the advantage being underestimated has brought her. She challenges Five on her first day there, earning his respect, and joins his group at the urgings of Klaus and Vanya, who like her company. A fashion queen, she acts as though she’s unfazed by any and everything, but nobody knows her true heartbreak - she still writes letters to a girl back home. Allison was expelled from her Christian private school for falling in love with a girl named Natalie, who she kissed in janitors’ closets and who she beat up racist and homophobic blondes for. She has no tolerance for bullies, and yet becomes one under Five’s guidance - until she upends his reign as queen bee and signs her death warrant. (Though she later finds out he was more angry at her for stealing Klaus and Vanya’s affection than his popularity.) Now her only hope for happiness in her final days is Ray, the Shakespeare-quoting nerd in her English class… or Luther, the quiet dork in the Star Trek t-shirts in her math class. Fuck, she misses Natalie.

(Aaron) Luther is the posterboard for toxic masculinity. He’s on the football team but hates it, preferring his math tutoring and fantasy books to tackling drills. His bisexuality is his deepest secret - he once slept with Diego when they were drunk at a party after a football game, and he can’t get it out of his head. He keeps thinking about what might happen if somebody found out - would he be shunned like Diego? Trapped like Vanya? Plastic like Klaus? He doesn’t know. All he can do is continue to be kind and hope Allison loves him enough to love every part of him, beyond his good lucks and British accent and fucking Ray. So Luther stands up to Five, and pays the price. He compliments Klaus on his skirts, and pays the price. (Diego seems to simultaneously love and hate him for it, it’s confusing.) He holds the door open for Ben, and pays the price. He’s big enough to be scary, kind enough to be overlooked - but after that incident with Vanya, everyone looks at him like he’s a monster to be locked up. And soon enough, “star student” Luther, “teacher’s pet” Luther, “completely under the principal’s thumb and completely friendless and completely terrified of the world around him” Luther might just break under all that pressure.

(Janis) Diego is the school’s resident outcast and rebel punk - he wears skirts and fishnets and whatever the fuck he wants because if Klaus taught him anything when they were dating it was that gender is a construct and he looks hot in leather. They broke up when Diego was outed and Klaus chose to stay quiet when people started shunning Diego for it, but despite it all, Diego still loves him. He misses when they used to paint their nails together, because he has to paint his own now. They used to stare up at the stars together and fall asleep in the grass, curled up in each other, on the nights that Klaus would run away in terror from his dad and Diego would breathe with him and let him press his hand against his heart until Klaus’ panic died down. His heart still flutters when he sees Klaus smile around a lollipop… but he won’t take him back. He won’t. He just can’t forgive him. So instead, he talks to his mom about everything. He plays soccer with his sister Eudora. He paints shit while smoking weed with his best friend Lila. He thinks of Luther being scared of him and laughs. You know, he was almost in Allison’s position freshman year - Five loved him, and so did Klaus and Vanya, but then Vanya outed him to the whole school for no reason like a day before he and Klaus were going to come out together. And now they’re all estranged, and Diego has the strangest feeling that he’s lost his family, even though his mom is the only real family he’s ever known. But maybe he’s wrong. Because Klaus keeps sending him “anonymous” letters, leaving them on the porch and spilling secrets Diego never even would’ve imagined him having. But forgiveness is still a question - that is, until one day Diego gets a letter in a different handwriting: Five’s, telling him to man the fuck up and love Klaus before he kills himself trying to tear the stars down for Diego’s own personal pleasure, and suddenly, Diego is crying on his porch in the rain, missing a slender, sassy skeleton in his arms and a pink, bruised but unbroken heart in his chest.

(Damien) Ben is everyone’s favorite, and the kindest person in the world. He used to be Klaus’ best friend, but that ended when Ben got into an accident (there was a bus involved, that’s all you need to know) that landed him in a wheelchair and Klaus couldn’t deal with the mental pain it caused him. They still stare at each other longingly from across the cafeteria, but never say a word to each other, not even in class. But beyond Klaus, Ben has never had any friends, though he has a million aquaintances: he’s the only student in the school that everyone loves and respects. Five holds the door for him, though Ben can tell without having to ask that Five would rather nobody know that. He hangs out with Diego because he knows Diego’s lonely, even if he never wants to admit it. He advises Allison not to let anyone control her, telling her he knows Natalie from summer camp and that the deaf girl still loves her and reads every single one of her letters. He gives Vanya his lunch when she skips to cry in the gym after Diego yells at her, even though a part of him might think she deserves it sometimes. He plays sports with Luther after school and offers him an ear and some jokes about his problems, and a few touchdowns when he’s feeling good. He acts as Ray’s student consultant, because he knows how hard Ray works to treat him like an equal. He tutors Eudora in basically everything, but cuts study sessions short to play video games when he can tell she’s too stressed to think. He’s ace and pan and proud about it; he runs the school’s GSA; he defends Diego and uses the right pronouns for Lila when they’re alone without Lila ever having to him he’s trans. He bugs Reginald’s office in one of their many meetings and records enough conversations to get him fired when he tries to expel Five. And finally, karma rewards him - Klaus shows up at his house with a box of brownies he baked himself, all covered in smiley faces, and shoves them into Ben’s hands, shaking his head when Ben assumes they’re for Diego. I miss you, Klaus tells him, and Ben tugs him down into a kiss, pulling away with a stammered apology. I’m sorry, he blushes, and Klaus beams, leaping into his lap and hugging him closer than ever, the two of them queerplatonic partners from then on, forever linked by their fingers in the hallway. Happy. Finally.

Lila is the shy artsy kid who carries around one of those leather brown satchels that looks threatening but is really just code for “I think I’m too cool for a backpack so I stuff all my incorrect homework and favorite comic books into this sack of knockoff pig skin instead”. He’s covered in paint most of the time, and wears Alice in Wonderland combat boots and Sharpie-doodle-covered jeans and big black hoodies and soft grey beanies; he’s trans and hacked off his own hair until an undercut with choppy slash bangs and there’s pink streaks in them, of course, to match the bubblegum he’s always chewing. His nails are bitten and black, and his skin is decorated with tattoos that are almost exclusively Bo Burnham quotes, with the exception of Diego’s name right over his heart. (Diego has Lila’s name over his too - and Klaus’ and Eudora’s, though he’d never tell them that.) He gives his skirts to Klaus and gets along well enough with Five, them both being trans and all, and everyone else knows him as that kid who’ll spread rumors and steal things for bribes. It’s not like he can get in more trouble than he’s already in - he lives with his bigoted and abusive bitch of a mom. But Diego is his best friend - the one he shoots and stabs things with, the one whose ex-boyfriend he talks to because Diego will never admit to himself that he misses Klaus like he would his own lungs if they were torn from his chest, the one whose sister he’s in love with. Wait. Fuck. Oops.

Eudora is Diego’s sister, and the captain of the soccer team. She wears her red jersey with the white numbers to school every day, and is covered in tattoos of magical creatures, because she believes in all of them. She wishes she was a werewolf, and has dressed up as one every year for Halloween since she was ten. (And she’s let anyone dressed a werewolf give her a hickey just in case that turned her. It’s good to have all your bases covered.) She has a broken down pick-up truck named Travis-Trevor-Thomas-literally-any-other-T-name that she loves beyond belief, and drives Diego to and from school in it, though he grumbles about it every day. She eats lunch with him even though he insists he’s fine eating alone and wants her to go away, because she knows he’s lying, and she hangs around the GSA with him sometimes too. She’s lab partners with her brother’s “secret” ex-boyfriend, and is concerned by how quiet he is - she’s seen enough documetaries to know that quiet never means anything good. But unfortunately, she has her own academic drama to deal with - Hazel and Cha-Cha hate her for helping Klaus, and she hates them right back, leading to failing grades in both English and history no matter how brilliant her work is. Mostly, though, Eudora tries to get to know Lila - the pretty, angry, sarcastic emo boy she shares half her classes with, and flirts with every day despite how he ignores her. (ONLY because Lila still smiles and laughs every time she flirts with him, and Eudora knows from Diego that Lila thinks Eudora only flirts with him because it’s some sort of game of “if you get the guy who’s hard to get you win the hundred dollar bet” deal. Otherwise she would’ve backed off immediately because not doing so would be harassment.) Eventually, though, Eudora runs off-field in the middle of a soccer game and over to the stands to ask Lila to prom. Finally, she gets a yes - and, most importantly, a real smile, curled against her own mouth like a Cupid’s bow of promise.

Sissy is Vanya’s ex-girlfriend, and Fuckwad Carl’s current girlfriend. She hooked up with him after breaking up with Vanya, too drunk to even speak, and now her belly’s ballooning and her parents are gonna kick her out unless she marries him like a good Christian woman. And she really didn’t expect herself to tell them to fuck off for this one, but apparently lesbianism makes you do crazy things - so here she is, standing on Ray’s porch in the pouring rain and hoping for the best. She’s depressed and shows that by reading the Bronte sisters; Klaus opens the door for her and brings her notes with doodles all over them which makes her cry; she misses Vanya but hates her for what she did to Diego. And yet Vanya’s there when she goes to the abortion clinic, smiling and joking and holding her hand like always. One day she’ll have a baby and she and Vanya will raise it right, but fuck - that baby sure as hell won’t be Carl’s. (Because fuck that guy.)

Ray is a humanitarian, so, naturally, he’s also the student council president. Five has never mistreated him, because everyone loves and respects Ray, even his critics. He nurtures Allison’s intelligence and encourages Vanya’s musical habits. He tutors Klaus in basically every subject but never talks down to him because he knows the kid’s a genius, just a bit spacey from all the drugs (and the ADHD, let’s be honest). He helps bring Luther out of his shell and takes Lila out shopping for boy clothes, all of which he pays for himself. He’s not scared or offended by Diego’s sarcasm or intensity, instead greeting him every day in class with a new dad joke. He treats Ben to intelligent conversation like an equal and doesn’t let Five be so harsh he’ll regret it later, though he still lets him say what he means and be himself. Everybody knows he’ll be the real President one day - even if for now he wears pajamas to school every day because, in his words, “Clothes are just too much fuckin’ work, man.” (There’s a possibility he may have still been high from hanging out with Klaus that day.)

The Handler is the evil physics teacher. (I don’t know why I said evil clearly all science teachers are evil.) (Yes this is coming from a place of aggression but hey at least I recognize that.) (Plus he deserves it. So fuck you.) (*sticks tongue out*) (Don’t you see how mature I am?) (I’m sorry I’m sorry back to your regularly scheduled programming -) She’s Lila’s mom, and continually and constantly misgenders him (and Five!) in class, not even because she hates trans people, just because she hates him (and Five!). Five always challenges her dictatorial rule, refusing to participate in solidarity with Klaus when she forces Klaus to sit out for wearing skirts. She keeps trying to flunk Ray too, the little bitch, but he just keeps doing so well that she can’t even come up with a falsely plausible reason to fail him! She’s been bribing Hazel and Cha-Cha to flunk certain students for years, unaware that Lila has been stealing from the Handler’s own purse to double those prices for those students to ace their classes. Everybody hates her, and for good reason. I hope she gets fired. (Shut up and let me project onto fictional characters, assholes.)

Reginald is the evil principal and Klaus’ abusive dad. He sends Klaus to school every day in a boys’ “uniform”, which Klaus has to change out of in the bathroom every day with borrowed clothes from Allison. (Anything he owns lives at her house; they have an agreement.) Once Klaus forgot to wash off his nail polish before Reginald came home and he broke all of Klaus’ fingers one by one. (Agnes wants to beat him into dust with a rolling pin.) Klaus stays at Diego’s house a lot, though Klaus refuses to come after they break up even though Diego makes it clear that his door will always be open. Five, therefore, is super protective of Klaus - every time he comes over, he’s super respectful when Klaus is in the room and then verbally rips Reginald to shreds as soon as he’s gone. He once stayed over for an impromptu sleepover when he noticed that Klaus was terrified-ly coming up with more and more ridiculous excuses for Five to stay and not leave him alone with Reginald, and as soon as Klaus was asleep, tiptoed around the house to set up bugs and cameras he got from Ben. He gives all of the evidence to Eudora to deliver to the police, who arrest Reginald and leave him to rot in a cement cell for the rest of his sorry fucking life while Klaus goes on to live Happily Ever After because fuck you and your stupid as shit traditionalism and inhumane experiments you lying scheming fuckwad of a psychopathic monster toad.

Hazel is the exhausted English teacher. His secret? He hates every book he teaches. Also he’s been taking bribes from the Handler and Lila because teachers don’t get paid enough in our society. Also his wife Agnes of twenty years divorced him a year ago for the whole bribery situation and he’s been sleeping in his car and using the school’s facilities to appear fine. Yeah, Hazel’s a mess. ANYWAY - Five is the only one who seems to know what’s going on, and Hazel would like to keep it that way. He knows Klaus is a genius with words but doesn’t know how to tell him that, and he knows Diego’s favorite book is Pride & Prejudice by Jane Austen and has agreed to take that secret to his grave. (What, it’s a good book!) His class is the only place Diego and Klaus dare to interact, and he’s noticed - they often pair up for assignments and take to the floor or beanbags in the corner, often cuddling up and giggling over whatever book or assignment they’ve been sent off to read or do. Hazel also has another hopeless couple he teaches, Lila and Eudora - eventually Hazel starts leaving Lila’s sappy poems about Eudora on Eudora’s desk when she comes in for her own class (separate from Lila’s) because there is no other way those two idiots are getting together, let’s be honest. There’s just too much communication. Mostly Hazel misses his own wife, Agnes - but he’s been out of luck since he cashed it in with the science department, hot cocoa whore that he is.

Cha-Cha is the history teacher, and she has all the sass and dry sarcasm required for that job. She will beat a bitch up for telling her she can’t teach critical race theory, and plays Drunk History and Overly Sarcastic Productions in her class basically every day. She doesn’t believe in tests because if she did she’d have to grade them, and she likes animated kids’ movies and TV shows, especially Paw Patrol and Sofia the First. (Yes, obviously she’s single. She’s also ace-aro, so who the fuck cares.) She takes the Handler and Lila’s bribes because she runs an underground wrestling ring and would like to continue feeding her pitbulls gourmet food. The only kid she’s truly on edge with is Five, who often challenges her in debates - she can’t decide if she’s impressed or enraged about it. Whatever. School’s out, bitches.

Agnes is the art teacher who knows everything about everybody. All of her art is of donuts. (Of course.) She’s a damn good cook, especially of pizza - and donuts. (Naturally.) She always has munchkins available for her students - and donuts! (She always saves the chocolate glazed and jelly ones for Five and Klaus.) She likes to rap explicit beats in her car and play her music so loud it shakes the ground and you can hear it from miles away. (Obnoxious.) So she doesn’t restrict her kids’ projects because that’s not what art is about. (And because it would make her a hypocrite, obviously.) Sure, she divorced Hazel, but hey - she’s living her best life, and eventually he’ll come to his senses and come crawling back to her at three a.m. to badly lipsync a Justin Bieber song about missing her, and she’ll leap out the window into his giant hairy arms and kiss him on his ginormous teddy bear face. Because Agnes, at heart, is a hippy. (And that’s love, bitch.)

Grace is Diego and Eudora’s (and everybody’s!) mom. She goes out for drinks with Agnes on the weekends and to clubs with Pogo every Friday (the librarian/unofficial therapist who acts as her mouthpiece when Diego does something stupid and won’t listen to her advice, the moron). She’s kind to everyone, but takes no one’s bullshit: you hurt her kids, you die. Important Notice: Everybody Is Her Kid. So be kind to everyone, dickwads. Well - except Reginald. And the Handler. Both of whom she bitchslaps for mistreating her precious babies. She then takes in Klaus because Diego loves him, and Ben because Klaus loves him, and Lila because both Diego ad Eudora love him. The only reason she didn’t take in Sissy was because Ray already had her taken care of. She’s a literal angel sent from heaven and we should all be worshipping her like the goddess she is I’m sorry I don’t know when this became Grace Appreciation Day™ but hey I’m here for it and I have no regrets.

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gleeandshame · 3 years

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Semi-liveblogging

A New York Christmas Wedding, indie Netflix movie... All I know is it’s on Netflix, there’s not a trailer, and uh, it’s wlw??? SPOILERS below!

WTF did they say “you’re not my girlfriend”

“She can’t know you like me” and then immediate fornication, I Do Not Want

Okay, we’re expecting like Lifetime or Hallmark Channel levels of writing on this I see...

Wait did she say her best friend died? Or I wasn’t paying attention. From watching later uh, maybe she said they lost touch, i mean, a BFF would be like the person Who you would think it would be but...

Asian wlw extras!!! intimacy :’)

(Wonder if she’ll be bi or gay)

Blah blah, mom is insufferable

Oh but so... is this a called off wedding then, I guess it’s her wedding, like that’s what the signs point to... huuuh.... Like, I hope there’s not cheating involved or I’ll be very :/

Wow, sassy BFF gay angel, lol

“You shouldn’t under estimate love during Christmas”

Here comes gay supernatural sh*t (at least I hope)

Gay angel, is she just gonna see 1000 gay signs tomorrow? Lol

I sincerely forgot his name, like Abziel or something, I’m sorry gay angel

oh right, i kept thinking they would be cold, but this is 6 mo before Christmas. today is a really chilly night for me

Azrael, I was close. I only remember it because it’s marked by the captions

Her fiance does have a nice back though

hate when there’s unnecessary flashback v.o. in stuff, just have a thoughtful look, feel okay with being quiet!!!

OH MY GOSH TRANSPORTED TO A GAY LIFE, I f*cking love it!!!

the light pouring in from the window and it’s looking all foggy.

They have a dog named Smudge :’)

Oh my gosh they’re having a meeting with a reverand or something for their gay wedding???

her tentativly grabbing the leash, i’m hear for this, thank you gay angel, there are endless amount of signs!!! lol.

I love smudges eyebrows!!!!

Oh thank you A... Azrael, i forgot Jennifer’s name for the whole movie (okay i took a couple hour break but still)

OKAY, the best friend is dead, or WAS dead. i was like how is this gonna work out, oooh.

This is rated MA and I think maybe just from cussing? We’ll see. So far she has said f*ck, lol

Those Christmas pajamas were corny, but it’s a family so that’s allowed. Bye David.

I hope I have a gay guardian angel

He said others are alive. is she gonna see her dad?

ghost of gays past

gosh dang it a flashback... it’s okay, it’s hopefully you know an inexperienced writer or filmmakers and they can get better.

I hope her dad is there

Oh but I forgot to mention since i wasn’t liveblogging from the start, uuuuuhhhh, why did she throw the cookies away, she was still there and her dad. Teens are so dramatic

where’s the dog? did she return the dog and go to her dads... wait, no he’s driving her home, Did they not want a dog in the car... lol

smudge? Smudge??? Lol. okay, i’ll ignore the filmmaking and continuity aspect.

Slide show interesting

Oh really noticing the handheld shakiness right now though

did that girl really sing it? doesn’t look like that voice comes out of that body

gays in a church, i’m feeling emotional (I know they’re not necessarily gay I’m using it as an umbrella term)

“you are my queen and I am your peasant” - this is like who’s the handmaiden and who’s the feudal lord meme, lol

why would a pastor.... whatever they’re call had a picture of just two church goers... parishioners? (can you tell I’m not catholic, are they catholic?)

Dang, they gonna fight to have a wedding here? Like personally if he said sh*t I would want to be married by him, but I guess the location does mean a lot to them.

They really be throwing Jennifer into this talk with no clue. Azrael give a girl some hints!!

Did the priest tell her to get an abortion? That’s the implication right? He wouldn’t say it though. Dang.

Eeesh, is this the f*ckboy that was with ... Gabby in the beginning? Never heard a boy trying to be a unicorn in a wlw relationship. Yike....

lol, yeah she told him to f*ck himself. and punched him in the face, LOOOOL

Awww, she told her dad about her crush on her BFF???

Lol, Jennifer getting excited about talking to her dad, and Gabby is like, babe, u see him everyday

Aw, a song in spanish

i didn’t mention earlier but afro-latinx yaaa. Noice

hmmm, yeah i mean it would be a little awkward bringing up a childhood/teenage fight

being forced to read the note by gabby and saying “out loud” nice device to make it natural to the audience

smudge is my favorite character

lol sorry, but if it’s christmas, is it christmas christmas, i don’t want this to be over. can she at least make out with her wife! is this day one or day two :/ okay i’ll just watch and see

DANG THAT WOULD BE INTIMATE ARM TOUCHES FOR A BFF

i only snuggled like once on a bed with one of mine.

O Christmas Tree playing during this make out is killing me

that was soft. just making out and some but rubbing but all just in undies, that’s nice

ok i think father is gonna do the old switcheroo on us. but this verse is engaging my fight or flight

Entertaining how neutral all these ppl’s faces are during this sermon, like realistic, lol....

okay there’s like one smile. there’s nodding now

(i know ppl would be upset realistically too)

Oh snap a man is walking out, okay yeah. There’s maybe three

LOL. I really did walk out once during a slippery slope sermon. Hate that white man took over one of my churches and he wasn’t even certified. I just sat on the curb until closing worship.... mmmm

did this man just invite all the lgbtq ppl up??

I wouldn’t want that attention, LOOOL........ i get it’s supposed to be a nice moment but, what?

They all have partners? Dang, where’s my partner at church (lol, church is hardly a thing anymore right now anyway :’) )

I DON”T want no SURPRISE WEDDING THAT IS JUST IN FORNT OF CHURCH PPL

glad they acknowledged that looong pause in a natural way

Imagine trying to attnd christmas service, and then it’s a secret wlw wedding

One of the gay couples, I”M SCREAMING, looks like a married couple at my current church, lol. I mean not like exactly, but same essense and energies

That SLITTTT, what a power move for a wedding dress / reception dress

Very weird lighting but i’ll ignore it

u don’t need to applaud the priest...

“to the day i die” (to the day i die) echo, echo... , that’s some corny audio

OH my goshhh??? is he the aborted BABY, whaiuhufheruahcyuahdsbhabshdfbahsbdfa

or their dead baby, whatever it was unclear on purpose. oh myy gosh????

what the f*ck david coming to get Jennifer like a horror movie

“what’s a smudge”

hmm i wonder how this can conclude

that map i huge on the console??? i don’t know modern cars

Gabrielle and I were mar-- we were baptized. LOLL, why woudl they just give away info about a parishioner

David must just be like, wtf is she on

oh okay, no abortion, just miscarriage

What, huhhh. this lady is same sex married too??? but the priest was kicked out?

is david gonna be biphobic

oh i guess not, that’s good

sliding doors? by Gbby’s son, Jennifer needs to get her girl

Me saying this show needs to let there be silence vs me almost falling asleep while she makes a decision. I MEAN, to be fair it’s almost 6am and i haven’t slept yet, lol

okay, but we didn’t spend enough time with Azrael for me to be sad that he’ll be gone, sorry not sorry

“it can wait” ... i.e. love can wait, be careful, i.e. use a condom

that’s entirely too many candy canes

i wonder if these kids are gonna have to carry the rest of the film?

these kids are the most chill! good they both like women and each other

they 3d printed a man just so he could be a gay angel

OH NO I watchd to the end of the credits and the guy on piano died this year

okay, so overall, p cute. Cute enough. It probably satisfied only about 33% of my cute wlw quota though. Corny and a bit awkward, but, i think gays deserve not high quality cinema as well. Lol. i half recommmend it, but it’s not costing you antyhing but time on Netflix.

okay, I sleep

#a new york christmas wedding #a new york christmas wedding spoilers #spoilers #...#mmmmmm

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crmediagal · 4 years

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I Have A Lot of Thoughts...

Okay. I just got back from seeing TROS. Bearing in mind that I already knew the main spoilers involving my precious boy, Ben Solo, and my beloved ship Reylo, I still have So. Many. Questions. And a flippin’ series of disappointments to whinge about, so get ready.

!!! WARNING: #TROS SPOILERS AHEAD !!!

Lets start with the main and, for me, most important factors: Reylo and Ben Solo

At the end of the day, if Reylo wasn’t ever intended to be end game, I could have lived with that. I’ve shipped whatever the heck I wanna ship and written those ships in fandoms I’ve loved for years, regardless of their basis (or more often, not) in the canonverse. I’d have survived if there was no kiss at the end.

Back in early 2016, when people were still speculating that Ben and Rey were related, I was writing them as lovers and doting parents, so, erm, again, for me, the ship wasn’t contingent upon them becoming canon in order to hold legitimacy/meaning. It shouldn’t for anyone, really. Ship whatever you wanna ship, guys! Love them regardless of screen time or lack thereof!

That being said, I will cherish That Moment™ forever when the Reylo shippers got a glimpse of what this incredible coupling could have been. And in the actual canon material, no less. That’s more than I'd have ever expected to receive and, frankly, was enough for me to be satisfied.

HOWEVER.

I was fully invested in this trilogy from start to finish for Ben Solo. And that is where I've been most letdown, disheartened, and pained.

At the off, sure, Kylo Ren made for an interesting archetype “villain” in TFA, but the moment we learned of his true identity, the Bad Boy™ appeal, for me, melted away. I fell in love with the tortured young man who had never really had the freedom of choice; who had the burden of war heroes for parents and a royal bloodline that traced back to Vader; who was abandoned by his family and left to navigate the enormity of his powers and abilities on his own. I was taken with Ben Solo’s troubled, many-layered complexity and this character took on a whole new meaning for me after TFA.

Like so many other Ben Redemptionists, I desperately wanted to see Ben Solo free of the torture he’d suffered all his life. And that life wasn’t long in years, unlike Anakin’s. By the end of Anakin’s life, he was more machine than man and middle-aged.

All the more reason that I needed to see Ben redeemed in this story...and allowed to walk freely in the sun.

SW is built on forgiveness and redemption, after all, so why would they not bring Ben Solo back to the Light and take him where Anakin’s story never could go? The groundwork was laid in two films and reiterated in countless interview quotes the creators dropped on us for four effin’ years. Disney and the creators seemed as invested in Ben Solo’s redemption arc as the fans were, so I wasn’t too worried about seeing it come full circle.

Hooooo boy. #MyBigFatMistakeThatIWillNeverMakeAgain

Ben Solo’s redemption, while earned in the last few minutes of TROS, was horribly cheapened when the creators decided to ‘play it safe’ by making him sacrifice himself. It wasn’t romantic and tragic, as I’m sure JJ and the creators were aiming for, but, rather, a Grade F example of very poor, very subpar writing. We got to see Ben for a few moments as himself whilst much of his storyline and importance in TROS was cruelly (and, it would seem, very purposely) reduced in the last film, too, when such plot for his character was supposed to be centre stage.

Less time devoted to Ben’s arc and then killing him off sends so many terrible messages, particularly for kids. You’d think Disney would understand that better than most.

Death is not hopeful. Redemption in the form of a young man, who was barely given the chance to live in Light and Love, dying as soon as his true self was realised isn’t hope. It’s been done before in this saga, as it has in many others, so it just makes the whole play-by-play defeatist and devastating. And after 40+ years of Skywalkers and Solos suffering in this universe, haven’t we ALL had enough of that, JJ? Disney?

They made Rey a Palpatine--a ‘surprise’ that had me actually laughing in the cinema and asking myself nervously, ‘Is this a joke?’--who takes the name of Skywalker to renounce her own bloodline but in the end, JJ, Disney, and the creators still sent us the same damnable, harrowing message: that Palpatine won.

#YIKES. That isn’t hope either, JJ! Disney! ABORT ABORT ABORT!

I thought JJ and the creators would be bolder than this PG-level crap. I thought Ben’s journey would be a true reversal of Vader’s, just as the director himself quoted not too long ago, and what did we get instead? Dusty old tropes and the sour takeaway that redemption will always come at a price rather than at its simplest, most exceptional form: the beauty of a second chance.

In the end, Ben Solo’s never to know freedom from Darkness? He's never to have the opportunity to make right of his wrongs by living in the Light? He's never to grow old? Instead, he’s to die a too-young death in the hands of a woman who actually loves and cares about the role he has to play in this whole saga; perhaps, the only one who cares at that point?

That’s cruel, JJ. Disney. And, again, utterly hopeless.

Hell, Ben’s not even one of the Force Ghosts Rey sees in the last scene of the movie! (A convenient loophole, yes, and the flicker of an opportunity to, perhaps, bring him back but it’s a wildly overlooked mistake if that wasn’t intended by the creators...and I don’t think it was intentional to make him Not There™.)

I don’t get this saga anymore. I failed to grasp the overall message of Hope in TROS. At all. I’m beyond disappointed at the assassination of Ben’s character to give others, who shall remain nameless, more screen time and a beefier storyline which was, frankly, always quite thin to begin with. I feel like I’ve been cheated on...and it hurts so badly to be so letdown by something you’ve loved and supported for so long.

And some other ridiculous absurdities in TROS while we’re still here:

Why was this film ALL about Rey’s lineage, a direction that seemed to come out of nowhere when it was already established in TLJ that her background wasn’t important or crucial to her part in the story? She came from nowhere, so why did this become a central thing?

I’ll admit that I never really cared whether Rey was a Skywalker or a Kenobi or had any given name. I rather enjoyed the idea that she had built herself up from nothing. That was an empowering message, in fact, and a strong one, I think. It was certainly leaps and bounds better than the, ‘HA! GOTCHA! SHE’S PALPATINE’S GRANDDAUGHTER!’ reveal that was laid onto us way too thick in the Final Act.

Ew. Gross. No thanks. I hate it. Take it back. It’s a passe trick to try and pull on the audience at the last minute.

One of many more examples of poor writing by the creators, I suppose.

Also, since when is Finn a Force sensitive? Did I miss something in TFA or TLJ that suggested he possessed that gift? No? Ah. More lousy writing.

Additionally, why does Finn spend the entire movie running after Rey? Why was his romantic storyline with Rose completely dropped and nonexistent in TROS?

It’s almost as if JJ and the creators were giving TLJ director, Rian Johnson, the middle finger throughout the entire finale that was this garbage of a movie. Nice work in undoing all the innovative things Rian brought to the saga, JJ. TROS is even worse™ than the Prequels...and THAT’s saying something.

Why did all the voices of Jedis past speak to Rey but never the helpless Ben Solo who had Palpatine raping his ear from the time he was a baby? It seems sketchy and unfair?

Again, lots of TROS makes little sense. It felt like an entirely separate movie to me--separate from the rest of the saga--and doesn’t wrap 40+ years of this series up all too nicely. It’s anything but. It’s confusing, heartbreaking, and leaves one without much hope.

So...we come to the end of my ramblings and wailings:

Ben Solo was the most interesting, convoluted, and beautifully crafted character from this new trilogy and a true redemption would have served the legacy upon which the SW saga is built--Hope™--so much better, including but not limited to its utilisation in making Han’s death carry meaning. Because his son would have not only returned to the Light but gotten to Live™ and experience it fully.

What a remarkably hopeful ending that would have been...

Instead, we got garbage writing and the redundant SW tropes.

Ben Solo deserved better. JJ and the creators absolutely wasted his potential in this story and I’ll be forever crestfallen..and retreating more and more into my own Ben Redemption fics because to hell with this elementary-level bullsh*t.

Han Solo deserved for his son’s part in his demise to not be utterly pointless at the end because, hey ho, guess what? YOUR SON DIED ANYWAY?!

Leia Organa deserved to not only see her son redeemed but to have that emotional reunion many of us were craving. She had already lost so much, but I guess JJ and the creators decided to just...serve the general more pain in the end. Wow. Rude. Such disrespect. Carrie Fisher wouldn’t have stood for it.

And Rey... My gawd, she deserved better, too. She should never been tied to Palpatine in order to make her seem more important. That grossly underserved her character.

She also should have had her other half. The yang to her yin. The only other person in the entire ruddy galaxy who understood her: Ben. She deserved to not be left alone at the end of TROS, just as she had started in TFA.

I’m going to go work on my WIP Reylo fic now and try to forget TROS entirely.

#ben solo #reylo #reyben #tros #tros spoilers #rey #star wars #i am in pain #i am....so heartbroken

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sleepdepwritings · 4 years

Text

Presented for archival purposes only, the first part of a story I wrote many years ago and will not be continuing no way it’s very bad.

A Save the Spiders Gig

by Cody L Ralston

Chapter 1

The vampires stormed the stage while we were in the middle of "Walking is Still Honest," which was not fucking cool.

First of all, it's my favorite song by my favorite band. You don't go with the stage name "Against Steve" unless you love Laura Jane Grace. Second, Ted steps back and lets me sing lead on that song, and I fucking shred at it. I shriek that motherfucker, alright?

And third, y'know. Vampires.

The gig was a bonfire/kegger/minor riot some local kids had arranged in the badlands outside of town. We were set up on a platform we'd jerry-rigged from some old wooden pallets and milk crates, wailing sloppily at two or three dozen drunken, pill-popping, weed-smoking punk kids and a handful of older crusties who thought we were "true punk" because we sucked. Everyone in that crowd was screaming, slamming, arguing, fighting, and a few on the outskirts of the firelight may have been screwing right there in the dust.

In all the chaos, it was easy to miss things that would otherwise have set off warning signals. Like flying bottles. Or jagged-toothed undead monsters leaping for my throat.

The first vampire, a young man with a mop of dark hair, came at me just as I made a flamboyant motion with my bass that ended with the body of the instrument coming up hard into his jaw. I choked on the line I'd been singing and made to apologize before I noticed that two other people had leaped onstage, and that all three of them were baring huge sharp teeth at me and my band. All three had dirty, claw-like nails to match, and their skin and eyes had a pale blue tinge that put me immediately in mind of dead things.

"Shit! Vampires! Shit!" I yelled, right into the microphone. The audience probably thought I'd gotten high and forgot the lyrics, but Kassie, Ted, and Dave dropped the song immediately and made to defend themselves.

"Steve! Catch!" Dave yelled, throwing one of his drumsticks toward me. I dived for it, but one of the vamps tackled me, cracking the pallets as our combined weights slammed down on them. I clawed and scrambled for the drumstick, but the vampire had me pinned by the legs and lunged for my neck at the same time.

There was a solid "THONK" and a whine of feedback. The vampire rolled off of me, hissing at Kassie, who had just clubbed him over the head with her guitar without bothering to unplug it from the amp. Holding it by the neck like a golf club, she hammered another blow into the vampire's temple while I got my feet under me and grabbed at the stick.

Wheeling around with the stick clutched in both hands, I brought all my weight down on the dazed vampire, driving the length of wood right into the center of his chest. The stick splintered and broke when it hit his sternum, but one splinter must have made it through the rotted bone to his heart. He shrieked with pain and rage, convulsing, tearing at the ground with his clawed hands and tossing his head back. I fell back, Then, suddenly, his cries died off, his body went slack, and his flesh began to slough off, dissolving into a putrid, green-black goo that bubbled and stank.

Kassie reached out one heavily-tattooed hand to me and helped me up off my knees. I winced- her grip had driven some of the splinters deeper into my hand.

A few yards away, Ted was holding one of the other vampires off with a mic stand. He had butted the foot of the stand into the hollow of the bald, emaciated creature's throat, and was pushing with all his might to keep the frenzied thing at arm's length. The vampire howled and lunged, forcing him back.

"Guys, I need help!" Ted screamed, panic rising in his voice. "He's really dumb but he's really strong!"

I looked around for the nearest weapon and found nothing but the splinters of the pallet at my feet. Cursing through clenched teeth, I grabbed an arm-length piece of splintered board and lunged at the vampire's back, leading with the sharp(ish) tip.

Said tip sank several inches into the creature, right between his shoulderblades. Unfortunately, while the board stopped at several inches, I didn't. My momentum carried me forward into the now dying vampire, who in turn slammed forward into Ted. We all hit the ground with a muffled "Shit!"

For a terrfying instant the wailing, snapping, clawing thing was trapped between us. Then, finally, it stilled, melting into corpse-goo all over my fucking shirt. Ted's shirt too, I guess.

Breathing hard, we got up, shaking and covered in rotten sludge. Ted sputtered and wiped some of the stinking shit out of his beard. Kassie, ever appropriate, was pointing and giggling at us.

"You guys actually made vampire-slaying look pathetic!" She snorted. I glared and looked to the back of the stage.

"Where's Dave?!" I yelled. Our drummer and the third vampire had disappeared from sight, which was a hell of a trick considering dave is six foot two without his massive green warhawk.

"Oh, right here." Called a voice from my left. I whirled around to see Dave step into the firelight nearly twenty yards away from the rest of us. How the hell did he get over there so fast?

"One of the fuckers tried to run. Don't worry, I got him." Dave hopped up onto the stage, and I noticed he was gripping a ride cymbal in his left hand. He took his place behind his kit and replaced the cymbal. One edge was bent sharply and stained black. Dave looked to me, smiling beatifically.

"Shall we?" He asked casually.

I turned back to the partygoers spread out in front of us. All of them had stopped to stare at the fight. A few were gaping dully, some were murmuring questions to each other,and a few near the front looked like they were about to start screaming. For my part, I stared back at them, wide-eyed and soaked in what I was pretty sure was someone's liquified intestines.

Ted, natural showman, was the one who finally acted.

"Guess our friends jumped their cue a bit, huh?" He laughed into the nearest mic. "Hope you enjoyed out little skit there. He's some Misfits covers for you. ONETWOTHREEFOUR!"

***

We fumbled our way through "Astro Zombies" and "Last Carress," then ran for Ted's van, parked with the cluster of other vehicles beyond the fire. We huddled around the far side to discuss what had just happened.

"What the fuck Dave?!" I hissed. Dave drew back, looking indignant.

"What? What did I do? Some vampires just attacked us, why would you blame me?"

"What the FUCK, Dave?" Kassie and Ted spoke simultaneously.

"Dave" is not Dave's real name. We all took stage names when we formed our band, Save the Spiders. Theodore "Ted Kennedy" Paige is four lead singer, Kassandra "Kassie Kriminal" Jones our guitarist, Steven "Against Steve!" McCool (me, nice to meet you) our bassist, and Dave G. Abortion is our drummer.

I don't know Dave's real name. I don't know if he has a real name. What I do know about Dave is this- he is tall, tan, has dark eyes and typically Navajo features, and the night I met him I saw him transform into a ten-foot-tall insectoid monster and bite off a man's arm. The man survived. Don't worry though, because after a lot of explaining and screaming and vomiting, I helped Dave hunt him down and finish him off before he could eat a couple of toddlers.

Oh, and he's a decent drummer. Kind of a showboat though.

Since that night, we had all had further encounters with monsters and magic, and almost all had been attracted by Dave and his mysterious powers.

So we stood there, scowling, daring him to keep denying that this was somehow his stupid fault. Eventually, he sighed and rolled his eyes.

"Look, there are LOTS of vampires who don't like me. It'd be hard to narrow it down to one group and one reason."

"What, didn't you recognize any of them? You got real up close with the one guy." Kassie said. Dave shrugged.

"They were all fairly fresh. Probably servants to whoever had the real grudge. I expect there'll be more coming."

Ted groaned.

"Why are we always in the crossfire with you? Why can't they kill you in your sleep and leave us out of this?"

"Why, because you're my best friends and stalwart companions, and killing you would hurt me more than any wound, of course!" Dave grinned and tossed an arm around Ted's shoulders. Ted jerked away from him.

I shucked my ruined shirt and tossed it onto the rocky ground. I ran my hands through my shaggy blonde hair, trying to think up a plan of action.

"Okay, so. Dave, you need to ask around and figure out who's in town that might want you dead-"

"Long. List. Dude."

"What the fuck ever! Go through it! And we need to set up some kind of defense system at the house. I don't want to be eaten on a futon, I'll disappoint my parents." I glanced in the direction of the party, which had gotten back into swing. "And we can't take any gigs until we've got this sorted out. We don't want to get normals involved in this shit."

"Good thinking, by the way, Ted." Kassie interjected. "Passing the vamp attack off as part of the show. Think they bought it?"

"Yeah, yeah. Everyone there was off their skull on booze and speed. Half of them won't remember it happened at all, and I'm sure no one is going to leave here convinced they saw real vampires."

"I know I saw real vampires."

The voice came from behind us, between the cars. Everyone jumped and raised their hands in vague, ineffectual defensive motions.

A young man, probably around nineteen, stepped forward hesitantly. He was black, on the short side, with a swimmer's build and close-cropped hair. He wore a faded denim jacket, blue jeans, and a Ramones t-shirt, all rumpled and a bit ratty. His eyes were cast down shyly. While I should have been concentrating on what he was saying, I couldn't help thinking to myself that he also had a really cute face.

"Those were real vampires." He said, louder this time.

"Kid, you do NOT want to go around saying that." Kassie said, quirking a pierced eyebrow. "Normals will want to lock you up and vampires- if they existed, which they don't, nuh-uh, no way- would want to kill you. If they existed. Which-"

"I KNOW they exist." The kid looked up to meet our eyes, indignant now. "I know they exist because I've seen them before. They took some of my friends. I think they ATE them. And I came here tonight because someone told me you guys have handled creepy stuff like this before. I came here for your help." His eyes flicked down again, and his lower lip (his really quite full and soft-looking lower lip, I noted, like a fucking idiot) quivered. "They're after me, too. They know I know."

The band exchanged looks. If this guy had contact with the vampires, he probably knew who they were and maybe where they were holed up. And if they were after him, we had a duty as non-assholes to help him.

And, well... For all Ted's bitching, we all knew we were nursing a big stupid hero complex.

I held my hand out to him.

"My name is Steve McCool. And we're going to help you however we can, alright?"

He looked at me with relief in his shining eyes. He shook my hand, his own clammy and sweating.

"Thank you. Thank you so much. I'm Jamie, Jamie DeVries."

"Well Jamie, this is Kassie, Ted, and Dave. Hop in the van. We're going to pack up and then we can take you to our place and you can give us some details on these bastards." I turned to the others.

"Alright guys, let's haul ass and get back to the squat."

#Fiction #Fantasy #Bad #Stupid stupid stupid

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angelofthequeers · 5 years

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Ladybug and Reine Nuit: Chapter 5

Stormy Weather

Disclaimer: I don’t own ML.

@miraculousl4dybug tagged as requested!

Part 4 | Part 6

“Uh – coming!” Marinette calls when the doorbell rings. “Manon, no!” Groaning and giving up on getting her phone back from the child anytime soon, she shuffles over to answer the door.

“Alya?” Marinette blinks. “Uh, what are you –?”

“Mireille! Mireille! Mireille!” Manon chants in the background. Alya grins and leans to look around Marinette.

“Well, I came to see if you wanted to go to the park and hang out,” she says. “Adrien’s got a photoshoot on, so I figured we could pull funny faces in the background while he’s posing.”

“Alya! You know his photoshoots are important!” Marinette protests, though she can’t stop the laugh that escapes her.

“To who? Him or his dad?” Alya says dryly. “Well, looks like we can’t do it anyway.”

“Yeah.” Marinette grins sheepishly and scratches the back of her head. “That’s Manon, one of my mum’s friends’ daughters. I’m watching her all afternoon.”

“Couldn’t say no?” Alya says. “Don’t worry, girl, I get it. It took me years to build up immunity to my twin sisters and their baby doll eyes. Hey, what d’you say we get Ella and Etta and take them and Manon to the park together?”

“Well…” Marinette chews her lip and looks over her shoulder at Manon, who’s running around the living room like she’s downed a whole energy drink. “I mean, Nadja never said that Manon had to stay here. And it might help to get out – uh, help? No! She’s…an absolute angel!”

Manon running past while clanging a pot and spatula wipes the pained smile off Marinette’s face as she shrieks and chases after the giggling child.

“Yay!” Manon cheers.

“Manon! Put that down! Ugh, come back!”

Alya snickers while watching the chaos. “You’re just a pushover, Marinette. I have to babysit Ella and Etta all the time, so I’m an expert in dealing with angels.”

Manon comes screeching to a halt when she catches sight of Alya. Not expecting this, Marinette flails as she tries to stop, resulting in her crashing to the floor after losing her balance.

“Who are you, anyway?” Manon demands, frowning at Alya. Alya grins and kneels, while Marinette groans and climbs to her feet.

“I’m a mythical unicorn from the world of Rispa, disguised as a totally fabulous human girl!” she says. “I grant magical wishes, but only to little monkeys to behave!”

“No, you’re not!” Manon says. Then she blinks. “…Are you?”

In response, Alya grabs Manon and tosses her in the air, then deposits her on Marinette’s shoulders.

“Okay, let’s go get my sisters and then go to the park!” Alya says.

“Yay!” Manon says.

“Okay!” Marinette says, wishing not for the first time that she could get people to take her seriously like Alya can.

“Park! Park! Park!” chant three little kids, yanking Marinette and Alya into the park. If Manon had been hard enough to handle alone, then Ella and Etta Césaire ramp the intensity up to eleven, especially being identical twins. Thankfully, Alya knows exactly how to handle them, so they’re more like exuberant children than little monsters from Hell.

Over at the fountain, Adrien is posing while a photographer snaps picture after picture of him wearing a lilac button-up T-shirt and pale grey jeans. The thickset man that Marinette had confronted two weeks ago, who happens to be Adrien’s bodyguard, stands nearby. Marinette gulps; she’s still unsure if he hates her for her show of defiance on Adrien’s behalf, and she doesn’t exactly want to find out.

“I want to see hunger in your eyes!” the photographer declares as Marinette and Alya are tugged past with the children. Adrien looks up at that moment, and when he catches sight of Marinette, his entire face lights up and he gives an aborted wave. “Yes! The passion! The hunger! Perfecto!”

Next to Marinette, Alya pulls a face, poking her tongue out, so Marinette crosses her eyes and gives a silly grin. Adrien snorts rather loudly, covering his mouth and looking down, but this backfires on Marinette and Alya because the photographer then starts celebrating Adrien’s bashfulness and demanding more.

“Marinette, I want a balloon with Mireille on it!” Manon says. “Can I? Pleeeeeease?”

“Yeah!” Ella says. “Balloon!”

“Please, Alya!” Etta says. Alya sighs and then shakes her head with a smile.

“Stay here with Marinette and I’ll get your balloons,” she says. The children cheer and start running around, while Marinette sinks to the ground and watches them through lazy, half-closed eyes. She wants to say that this is the last time she’ll let herself get suckered into this but…yeah, no, she’s a total pushover.

“You!” Adrien’s photographer is suddenly in front of Marinette, pointing at her. Marinette shrieks and jumps to her feet. “I need an extra!”

“Wha – who – me?” Marinette says.

“Sì! To pose with Signor Adrien! He specifically requested you!”

Over the photographer’s shoulder, Adrien looks as though Christmas has come early. It’s not like Marinette doesn’t want to do it, but…she can’t exactly abandon the girls. Alya isn’t back yet, and it’s totally unfair to expect Alya to look after three girls.

“Go on, Marinette!” Alya’s back with three Mireille balloons. “Trust me, I can handle these little angels.”

“Well…” Marinette looks at Adrien again. “I guess if you’re sure?”

“Yep!” Alya says. “We’ll go to Rispa and find us some sad little village kids and grant those wishes! Unicorns unite!”

“Unicorns unite!” Manon, Ella, and Etta cry. With a shrug, Marinette is about to head over to the fountain, but a sudden cackle above them stops her in her tracks.

“Oh no!” she gasps when she catches sight of the girl floating in mid-air, wearing a purple dress and white boots and gloves, with spiky purple and white striped pigtails, an electric purple mask across her pale cheeks, and a large parasol in her hands.

“I am Stormy Weather!” the girl announces. “Don’t worry, it’s only a light breeze!” She aims her parasol at the people below, and an enormously strong gust of wind comes bursting out, sending everyone flying. Marinette screams and tries to grab a nearby tree, only to fall flat on her face when the wind suddenly dies down. “I suggest you get somewhere a little warmer, because it’s about to get chilly!”

It happens almost in slow motion. “No!” Marinette cries, rushing for the fountain, but it’s too late; Stormy Weather shoots a bolt of ice out of her parasol, creating a thick dome of ice that traps Adrien, his bodyguard, the photographer, and the three girls inside. She’s rooted to the spot for a moment while people around her shriek and run, but then she remembers that she’s one of the only two people able to deal with this, and so she darts behind the tree she’d tried to use to anchor herself against the wind.

“We’ll save the girls, Marinette!” Tikki says firmly. Marinette nods.

“Tikki, spots on!”

As Ladybug, she immediately heads for the icy dome and tries to cut it open, but her yo-yo can’t get any traction on the slippery ice and so it just slides right off.

“Don’t worry about us!” Adrien says, his voice muffled by the ice. “Just go and take down Stormy Weather!” He groans. “Ugh, I can’t see the action from here!”

“Where’s Marinette?” Manon says, her lip quivering.

“And Alya?” Ella and Etta chorus. Ladybug smiles in what she hopes is a reassuring manner.

“Marinette’s safe,” she says. “She told me about you, Manon. And as for Alya…she probably got blown away with everyone else. I’ll make sure to find her!”

When Ladybug finds Stormy Weather, she’s slammed Reine Nuit into the ground with wind and ice and has summoned a thunderstorm to no doubt try and zap Reine Nuit with lightning. With a sigh, Ladybug throws her yo-yo to wrap around Reine Nuit’s waist, then pulls her out of harm’s way. Reine Nuit smirks and salutes at Stormy Weather as soon as she realises what’s going on.

“Just in time, angel bug,” Reine Nuit says when Ladybug deposits her on the ground. “I don’t think she’s a fan of cats.”

“I’m not a fan of bugs either,” Stormy Weather growls. “And unluckily for you, ladybugs shrivel in the cold!” She aims a burst of ice at Ladybug, who dances out of the way and then throws her yo-yo at Stormy Weather. The weather girl snorts and leans out of its way. “Is that really all you’ve got?”

“To be fair, I’ve only been doing this for two weeks,” Ladybug says.

“That’s not very ice of you,” Reine Nuit grins at Stormy Weather.

“Hey! Only I get to make weather puns!” Stormy Weather sends Reine Nuit flying over the rooftops with a burst of wind. Then she turns to Ladybug and commands lightning after lightning bolt to shoot down from the skies, and it’s all Ladybug can do to yelp and dodge each electric purple blast. How are they supposed to defeat Stormy Weather when they can’t even land a hit on her?

“Hee-yah!” A silvery baton comes whizzing out of nowhere and strikes Stormy Weather in the head, sending her crashing to the ground. With a snarl, the akuma whirls around and dodges Reine Nuit’s dive for her, then whacks Reine Nuit with her parasol.

“That was a sleety thing to do!” Stormy Weather hisses.

“Hey, that one wasn’t actually half-bad,” Reine Nuit says, reeling back from the whack. Stormy Weather looks torn between preening and attacking, but her bloodthirsty akuma nature wins out and she jumps out of the way of Ladybug’s yo-yo, then raises her parasol and summons a mini tornado on top of the heroes.

“I’m gonna be sick,” Ladybug groans as she whirls around and around in the funnel. The tornado then explodes, sending her and Reine Nuit careening over the buildings, screaming. Ladybug’s head whips around, trying desperately to find a good anchor, and she eventually grabs Reine Nuit by the tail, then throws her yo-yo to catch around a chimney and brings them crashing to a halt on the roof, tumbling over each other because Ladybug may have changed their path, but they were still full of momentum from the tornado.

“Man, she makes Stoneheart look like a piece of cake,” Reine Nuit comments, pushing herself to her feet. “How are we gonna take her down?”

“We find her, for starters,” Ladybug says. She accepts Reine Nuit’s helping hand up. “Then…uh, we wing it? Charm it?”

Reine Nuit holds up a finger. “Can you Lucky Charm me a sick bag?” she says before bolting to the edge of the roof and throwing up. Ladybug wrinkles her nose with a disgusted exclamation, although her stomach feels about the same after the treatment she’d just gone through, so she can’t exactly blame her partner. With a weak groan, Reine Nuit sinks to her knees. “That. Was. Awful. Why don’t they ever tell you about this in the brochure?”

“Sorry that it’s not all adoring fans and fun powers,” Ladybug says dryly. “Where could she have gone?”

As if in response to her question, a nearby big screen flickers to life, revealing Stormy Weather against a green screen backdrop of a map of France.

“Hello, viewers!” the weather girl chirps. “Here's the latest forecast for the first day of summer. Looks like Mother Nature had a change of plans. Summer vacation is officially over!”

“Good thing I like the cold, then,” Reine Nuit says. “Hot chocolate, blankets, fires…what’s not to love? Although it hasn’t been summer for a few weeks now, so I’ve got no clue what she’s on about.”

Ladybug scowls at her and shivers violently. Now that they’re not on the move, the cold is catching up to her, eating into her bones, numbing her hands and feet under her suit, turning her nose into an icicle. It seems that Stormy Weather had been right about ladybugs not exactly thriving in the cold.

“Well, we can’t all be furballs like you, pretty kitty,” Ladybug says. “But at least now we know where to find her.”

Of course the broadcast is a trap and happens to be just a recording. Really, after all the superhero stories Reine Nuit has read, you’d think she’d have been able to at least suspect that this was going to happen. But no, she and Ladybug had just waltzed right into the studio, leaving them utterly at Stormy Weather’s mercy as she fried the building’s circuitry, leaving them in total darkness.

Or, at least, leaving Ladybug in total darkness. Man, between her resistance to the cold and her newfound night vision, Reine Nuit is absolutely killing it here.

“Come on!” Reine Nuit grabs Ladybug’s hand as Stormy Weather cackles and runs away. “I’ll help you, angel bug.”

It’s a mark of how serious the situation is that Ladybug doesn’t fire back with a witty retort, but instead nods and lets Reine Nuit guide her out of the studio and down the hall after Stormy Weather. They burst through the door at the end of the hall, chasing Stormy Weather up a flight of stairs, and it’s purely by instinct that Reine Nuit tackles Ladybug to the ground to prevent a fire extinguisher from slamming her in the face when Stormy Weather throws it down at them.

Thankfully, it doesn’t take them long to burst out into what little natural light there is outside on top of the studio building. But now they’re trapped between massive billboards on all sides, with Stormy Weather floating above them.

“You airheads!” Stormy Weather crows. “You fell right into my trap! Tornado!” She thrusts her parasol up to summon another tornado, only this one is about five times the size of the one she’d created before. If that one had made Reine Nuit sick…well, she doesn’t even want to start imagining what this one will do to her once Stormy Weather unleashes it on her. If there was ever a time to summon a Lucky Charm, Reine Nuit would think it’s now. Apparently, so does Ladybug.

“Lucky Charm!” the red hero calls, then catches a ladybug-patterned bath towel that falls in response. “Uh, what am I supposed to do with this?”

“At least we won’t get wet,” Reine Nuit deadpans.

“Good thing too, since cats hate water,” Ladybug shoots back.

“Hail!” Stormy Weather seems to decide that the tornado isn’t bad enough and that the heroes could really do with some nice, thick chunks of ice raining down on their heads to crush their skulls. Purely by instinct, Reine Nuit shoves Ladybug down and starts spinning her staff like a propeller above their heads, creating a temporary hail shield. But she can’t keep it up for too long, not when her right forearm is starting to seize and cramp.

“I got it!” Ladybug’s voice is a blessed relief. She points at one of the massive billboards surrounding them. “Bring it down, Reine Nuit!”

“Got it! Cataclysm!” Once her ring is sparking with destructive energy, Reine Nuit calls, “My grandma could do better than that, Ice Queen!” to get Stormy Weather’s attention. It works; the weather girl howls and shoots lightning bolt after lightning bolt at Reine Nuit, who dances and ducks and dodges each one until she’s close enough to the billboard that she can run her hand along the base to corrode the metal into dust.

From there, it’s over quickly. Reine Nuit’s distraction gives Ladybug the perfect opportunity to grab Stormy Weather by the ankle and run her yo-yo around a crane and several pipes for leverage, using the bath towel to help her soar into the air on a current created by one of the ventilation pipes knocked out by the billboard. This creates a counterweight that pulls Stormy Weather down as Ladybug floats up, and the crane is yanked around by the yo-yo and rips the parasol out of Stormy Weather’s hands, which Reine Nuit catches and tosses to Ladybug.

“No more evildoing for you, little akuma!” Ladybug declares, snapping the parasol over her knee. A black butterfly wriggles out of the broken pieces and tries to fly away, only to be swiftly captured by Ladybug’s yo-yo. “Time to de-evilise! Gotcha!” Once the pure white butterfly is released, Ladybug farewells it and then throws the bath towel in the air to summon her Miraculous Ladybug.

Just like with Stoneheart, Reine Nuit is mesmerised by the sight of the red and black swarm surging around, repairing the billboard and the pipes, dissipating the tornado and the storm clouds above them to summon back the brilliant blue sky and sunshine, then coursing outwards to fix the rest of Paris. Will this ever become any less wondrous? God, she hopes not. There’s just something so amazingly pure and raw about this that she could watch all day.

Stormy Weather, kneeling nearby, is encased in a purplish-black mass that strips away her villainous skin and leaves a girl with soft blonde pigtails and a blue frilly dress. She blinks and looks around. “Huh? What am I doing up here?”

Ladybug and Reine Nuit grin at each other. “Pound it!” they chorus, fist-bumping.

“Marinette!” Manon cries when Marinette detransforms and emerges from behind a tree.

“Manon!” Marinette kneels to let the little girl crash into her with a tight hug. “Oh my gosh, are you alright?”

“Sure, silly!” Manon says. “Adrien played a bunch of games with us! Did you know that he’s secretly a dragon?”

“Really?” Marinette raises an eyebrow at Adrien, who grins and shrugs. “I had no idea.” She lets Manon down.

“Girls!” Alya comes running from the other side of the park. Ella and Etta’s faces light up and they bolt to meet her.

“Alya, Alya, Alya!”

“Thanks for looking after the girls,” Marinette says to Adrien as Alya reunites with her babbling sisters. “I was so worried! I wanted to – but Ladybug told me –”

“It’s okay, Marinette,” Adrien says, thankfully saving Marinette from having to fumble for an excuse as to why she’d disappeared. “I’m just glad you’re okay.”

Marinette throws her arms around Adrien gratefully, although she can’t for the life of her figure out why his face is so red when she pulls away.

“Sì!” The photographer seems to pop out of nowhere. “The sizzling chemistry! You are a perfect match for Signor Adrien, Signorina…”

“Marinette.”

“Signorina Marinetta!”

“Please, Marinette?” Adrien scratches the back of his neck. “It’d really mean a lot. I think I’m having an off day today.”

With that, how can Marinette refuse? “Sure,” she says. “Alya, you can take care of the girls, right?”

“We’re going dragon hunting!” Alya says. “Who knows how many more dragons like Adrien are out there?”

“Dragon hunting!” Manon, Ella, and Etta cry.

“Come on, girls! We have to find a magic feather before we can hunt the dragons!”

The photoshoot seems ten times more alive now. The photographer – Vincent, Marinette learns – arranges them in poses such as sitting back-to-back on the fountain, then Adrien lifting Marinette in the air like a lover, then Marinette kissing Adrien’s cheek, although the last one makes Adrien look like his face is going to explode from how red it is.

“Stupendous!” Vincent declares, snapping away. “Magnifico! Perfecto! These are the most vibrant pictures I have ever taken of Signor Adrien!”

“Maybe you could model with me more often, then,” Adrien teases when he’s sitting on the edge of the fountain with Marinette in his lap.

“Not unless it’s an emergency,” Marinette says with a grin. At a gesture from Vincent, they change poses so that Adrien is standing up and holding her bridal style. “I like modelling well enough, but I’m much more suited to making the clothes than modelling them.”

Adrien’s eyes light up as he lets her back down on her feet, then turns his back to her so that he can pick her up in a piggyback. “Well…uh, if you ever need a model, you know where to come. Not only because you helped me now, but…well, I’d be honoured to model for you.”

Marinette beams back. “I’ll definitely keep that in mind!” she says.

#miraculous ladybug #aotq fic #aotq: reine nuit au #chat!alya #marinette dupain-cheng #alya cesaire #adrien agreste #stormy weather #adrien you're hopeless #photographer doing the lord's work #also rip reine nuit #reverse crush

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justanotherwannabeclassic · 5 years

Text

One and Done

Years ago and hundreds of miles away from one another, both Emma Swan and Killian Jones' dreams died in a single night. Years later, their paths cross, and those very crushed dreams may be what brings them together.

Author’s Note: I’m honestly shocked I’ve been able to write something, let alone a Modern AU. Credit for me accomplishing this goes to @distant-rose. You can also read this on AO3.

Rating: M

Content Warning: Mild smut, mild description of traumatic injuries

XXX

The first time she meets Killian Jones, they’re at a cookout held in a mutual friend’s backyard. He has a nice laugh and an even nicer smile, but as they talk over craft beer and hot dogs, she can’t help but think about how she knows of him, about how almost everyone interested in collegiate sports knows his name and why almost everyone else doesn’t.

She’d been in high school back then, with big dreams of college and a future and making a name for herself. She’d been sitting on the couch drinking lukewarm beer, her boyfriend’s arm wrapped around her as he and his roommates cheered on their school. It had been Storybrooke’s first time making it into the NCAA Tournament, and even though no one really expected them to win, spirits had been high. Emma recalls how they commentators spent a lot of time saying Killian Jones’ name, throwing out words like “lottery” and “one-and-done”, terms she didn’t understand that Neal seemed to. Neal didn’t like him, that much had been obvious, his insults growing more cutting as the game wore on and more alcohol coursed through his veins. She’d smiled and nodded, not wanting to disagree. She’d been “lucky” to be there anyway, still more than a little bit in awe that a college guy would be interested in her, so she held her tongue. (She doesn’t hold her tongue anymore.)

She remembers the moment it happened, doubts she could ever forget. It’s one of those moments that’s forever seared into her mind, watching him jump upupup, then come tumbling downdowndown.

She’s a cop now. She’s been well exposed to blood and bone and the many traumas the human body can endure, but that’s now. Prior to that moment, she’d never actually seen bone slice through skin, not to someone living and breathing and in considerable pain. Neal had cheered, said something about being “a regular guy now”. Emma wishes then that she had taken it as a sign of things come, but she’d been sixteen and naive, and she’d just watch a man’s career end before her eyes.

Looking at him now, she can hardly tell that he’d suffered such a traumatic injury on a national scale. The only tell is that he spends so little time talking about himself and instead peppers her with questions about her own life.

“Have you always lived in Boston?”

She shakes her head. “No. Only for the past few years, and that’s because David told me there was an opening at his precinct.”

“Where were you before?”

“Here, there, everywhere.” She doesn’t like talking about her past that much, in inability to find a stable home forever a sore spot. “Name a place, and I probably lived there.”

“Djibouti.”

“What the-- excuse me?” “Djibouti. It’s a country in the Horn of Africa. You said name a place, and I did.” His eyes sparkle and his brows dance when he says this. It’s infuriating. It’s also endearing. “I take it that you haven’t lived there.”

“You never would have struck me as someone so pedantic,” she says, trying to frown but utterly failing.

“I’m full of surprises, love,” he tells her, and his eyes promise something both dangerous and thrilling. But then he shrugs and the moment is lost. “Truth be told, I’m an AP history teacher. Comes with the territory.”

So this is where dreams go to die. High School.

As the afternoon wears on, Emma is surprised that she spends much of the event talking to him. She manages to redirect the conversation away from her, and he seems to respect that. They talk movies and museums, Boston traffic and the insane cost of living. What they don’t talk about is sports.

She tells him about Henry, and he doesn’t blink, but instead takes it in stride. She explains that her son’s favorite subject in English and he prefers not to do math.

“He still gets good grades, though,” she boasts, unable to hide the pride in her voice. No matter how many things she’s done wrong in her life, her son is proof that she can do at least one thing right. “And teachers love him. Really, you should be disappointed he’s not in your district. He’d be your favorite student, no doubt.”

“He sounds like a great kid.” Killian Jones cranes his head, turning to survey the crowded yard. “Is he here?”

Emma shakes her head. “He’s in New York. It’s his week with his dad.”

“A pity. I would have liked to meet him.”

Emma realizes in that moment that Killian Jones has passed a test she never intended to give.

It’s late by the time they leave the cookout, together but not. Killian had taken the subway in, and Emma offers to drive him back to his place.

“Nothing good happens on the train this late at night,” she says, “and, besides, an Uber would be ungodly expensive.”

She ignores the suggestive expressions Ruby throws her way, or the cautious one on David's face. As much as she’d like to pretend they were reading too much into her interactions with Killian Jones, the truth is that they’re not. She knows where this night is heading. Henry is with Neal, and she’s feeling good as much as she doesn’t want to spent the night alone in her empty apartment.

She’s pretty sure Killian feels the same way, and because of that, Emma feels no surprise when he invites her up for a nightcap and he shows no shock when she accepts.

Both her shirt and bra are on the floor before they even make it to the bedroom. She notices the scars on his wrist, but pretends not to, and it’s easy enough when he peels off his own shirt. He no longer has physique of the athlete he used to be, as to be expected, but he is toned well enough. Emma enjoys watching the way his muscles flex as he climbs over.

Like most first encounters, the experience is somewhat awkward, however there is a finesse to his movements that tells her that he knows what he’s doing, and she learns he’s a breast man based on much attention he pays her chest, licking and twisting. When it becomes too much, she urges him down, intrigued to feel just what his tongue can deliver. It takes some time, but he follows her instructions, and that is something she appreciates just as much as the way his tongue laps at he clit and his fingers curl inside of her.

He’s smug when she finishes, less so when she wraps her hand around his length and begins to move. It doesn’t take long for him to reach for a condom, and even less time to tear open the foil packet and sheath himself. Emma gasps when he slides into her. Though she isn’t the biggest fan of the feel of sex with a condom, it’s far better than any of the alternative so she focuses instead of the pleasant stretch of the cock and the way his pelvis presses against hers when he slides into her again and again.

After he comes, they take turns in the bathroom. He beckons her to join him back bed, offering an old pair of shorts and a t-shirt as pajamas. Emma has an excuse on the tip of her tongue. She’s normally not one to stay the night, but something inside her to accept. It’s only after she’s dressed that she notices the word “Wildcats” printed across in blue block lettering, and her stomach twists.

In bed, they spoon her back to his front. As she lays over his bicep, Emma can’t help but trace the silver scars that adorn his wrist.

“Sports injury,” he tells her, his voice soft.

She could play dumb, pretend that she knows nothing about him. It would be easy. Emma Swan has never done anything the easy way.

“I know.”

Killian tenses. “So you have heard of me.”

“Back then, when it happened, I was dating a guy who went to Storybrooke. I watched it on TV.”

“Oh.”

“I’m pretty sure that was the night Henry was conceived too. I think that’s why I remember it so well, because everything changed that night. I just didn’t realize it at the time.” She winces once finishes, not wanting to actually downplay his trauma. She hopes he didn’t take it that way.

“Well, I guess something good came out of that night.” He doesn’t pull away from her, but Emma can feel the rigidity of the muscles. “Is that why you came home with me tonight?”

“No,” she tells him. She thinks she should be offended by the question, but she isn’t. Instead, she finds herself hoping he believes her.

“They would, you know, right after. Plenty of pity fucks for the sad, broken basketball star.” Killian’s voice is more sad than angry, and Emma understands what he’s telling her isn’t to hurt her, but instead his own way of venting, of working through the pain. “In Lexington, when you wear the jersey, they treat you like a god. All the girls want you, and the guys want to be you.”

“And after you hurt yourself, that went away?”

“No, actually. They don’t forget you there. Not even the walks on, some of them still do camps even. But that’s why I had to leave.”

“Because you didn’t want to be reminded of what you lost,” she finishes for him. She considers turning to face him, but doesn’t. It’s easier this way, not having to having to look into one another’s eyes and make their deepest confessions. “Before I lived in Boston, I lived in Portland.”

“Oregon?”

“Maine. I moved there after I finished high school, but before I had Henry. I told myself that it was because Portland likely had better opportunities for a single mother like me, but really it was to get away from Storybrooke and everything.” Neal had wanted nothing to do with her after she’d told him about her pregnancy. He’d been pissed she refused to abort. It was only when Henry had been a toddler that Neal had waltzed back into his life, and that had only been because of his fiance-now-wife Tamara.

She’s not sure why she’d telling him all of this. It had taken years before she’d gotten the nerve to tell everything to Mary Margaret, but here in Killian’s arms, the words fall easy. Maybe it’s because he understands. Maybe it’s because his life also irrevocably changed that day. She’s not sure why, but what she does know that in this moment, she feels safe.

He must feel the same way, because he whispers, “What kindred spirits are we.”

It takes everything in her not to laugh, because he sounds so incredibly poetic, and she’s the exact opposite. “I was going to say we’re both fucked up, but we’ll go with that.”

“Yeah, we’ll go with that.”

That don’t say anything after that. Slowly but surely, Emma finds herself drifting off the sleep, and she is welcomed by peaceful dreams.

#cs ff #captain swan ff #cs au #captain swan #cs smut #s writes fic

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barbiehandlrr · 6 years

Text

Freedom

Tony Stark has always known trauma.

Warnings for: Graphic descriptions of violence, physical/emotional abuse, suicide attempt, suicidal thoughts, gendered slurs, PTSD, depression, anxiety, Howard Stark’s A+ Parenting

If Tony weren’t such a disappointment, his father would love him. This he knows for a fact. The boy lies on the floor, bruised and bloody, waiting for Jarvis to help him, his father’s words ringing in his ears.

Robots? Again? The military doesn’t care about robots, Anthony. Don’t bother looking at me until you make something I can actually use.

Worthless.

You’re a fucking waste of space, Anthony, and your mother should have just aborted you when she had the chance.

Tony can’t decide which hurts more: Dad’s words or his fists.

He hasn’t seen his mother in a month.

Mama has always been a fleeting figure, coming and going to charity events and almost immediately retreating to her room. But she never shouts at Tony to leave when he came in for a cuddle. He curls up next to her and she blows on his hair, making him giggle.

“What has my bambino gotten into today?” she asks.

And he launches into everything he had done that day, from building things, to cooking with Jarvis (but never about Dad hitting him; he cried about it to Mama once and she only said he didn’t mean to), and Mama listens and smiles softly.

Then she sleeps.

And sleeps.

And sleeps, and then wakes up and does it all again. Sometimes, though, she’ll squeeze in time for him. She’s been teaching him piano. Dad says he’s not very good, and Mama angrily shushes him and reassures him that Dad is wrong. Tony lets Mama hold him close, and Tony breathes in the scent of her flowery perfume.

It’s better than the scent of Howard’s harsh cologne.

Mama never stays, but Tony convinces himself that it’s fine, that he doesn’t need her physically there to know that she loves him.

That doesn’t explain why his heart feels cut to bleeding every time she leaves, though.

Tony rocks back and forth as he hides in the closet, eyes clenched shut and hands clamped over his ears. If he hides here, he’ll be safe. Dad won’t be able to find him, won’t be able to see him if it’s dark, won’t be able to hear him if he doesn’t cry, doesn’t breathe.

His eyes burn, and he blinks the tears back because Dad can’t find him, he can’t get hit again, he won’t.

Maybe, just maybe though, Tony deserves it. Dad had told him to stop building robots, and he did it anyway, but the design was so cool, and he thought that maybe his dad would like it, even though he’d threatened to hit him if Tony showed him another robot, but Tony never learns. It’s no wonder Dad hits him and calls him a worthless waste of space.

He made a mistake by leaving the bot on the floor of his bedroom. He jumped when he heard a loud crash, followed by a roar of, “God fucking dammit, Anthony!” and something in him had screamed safety safety get to safety, if he can’t find you, you’ll be safe.

The closet was safe, and he never wanted to leave.

Blood rushes through his ears. His heart pounds, and he tries to suck in air, but he can’t. He is going to die.

Dad’s going to kill me, Dad’s going to kill me, Dad’s actually going to kill me, help me, someone, help mehelpmehelpme, I can’t breathe and he’s going to kill me.

Howard isn’t even home, off on another expedition to find Captain America. Logically he knows this, but his brain is too loud, and he’s breaking Dad’s rules again, and Dad could come home at any second and find him and his fists hurt and Tony’s ribs still aren’t healed and -

Tony’s going to die.

He’s so hungry.

Dad had come home from Stark Industries early and found Tony cooking with Jarvis. Dad hates it when he cooks with Jarvis, says it’s too girly and that he hasn’t raised his son to be a pussy. Jarvis is careful to make sure Dad never finds out, because “What he doesn’t know won’t harm him, Master Anthony”, but Dad came home and caught them, and Tony had been having so much fun until he saw Dad.

When he sees Dad, he has to actively try not to shake. It always hurts more when he cries or shakes. His fractured cheekbone is proof.

Only this time, Howard doesn’t punch Tony. He doesn’t yell. Instead he sneers, grabs Tony by the hair and tugs until Tony’s looking him in the eye.

“What did I tell you about cooking, Anthony?”

Tony swallows the lump in his throat. He will not cry. “T-that it’s too girly.”

“And?”

“And…”

“Spit it out, Anthony!” A harsh tug draws an involuntary gasp from Tony. “I don’t have all fucking day!”

“Th-that you’re not raising me to be a pussy.”

“That’s right, Anthony.” He lets go and shoves Tony into the marble counter.

“Mister Stark, really-”

“Stay out of this, Jarvis!” Dad looms over Tony, and he represses a shudder. “I don’t think I’m getting through to you, Anthony. I do everything I can to make you tough. The world is cruel, boy, and you wouldn’t survive for a second because you’re too fucking sensitive. You like cooking? Too bad you won’t get to eat a fucking bite of it. And if I catch you sneaking food, you can kiss Jarvis goodbye.”

Dad drags Tony to his room and locks him in. Then, silence.

Tony’s too afraid to cry.

Jarvis sneaks Tony some food anyway, because for some reason, Jarvis loves him, but Tony can’t eat it all because fear makes the food taste like ash.

Tony becomes a pro at sneaking small snacks into his room over the years. They don’t taste like ash, and they’re easier to hide from Dad.

There’s still blood on his carpet from the last time he ate during a punishment and Dad found out.

Be a man, Anthony.

You’re a disappointment.

Grow the fuck up, pussy.

Get out of my sight!

I hate you.

Tony has trouble sleeping. A voice that sounds suspiciously like Dad’s taunts him until he’s wide awake, until he’s coming up with bigger, better weapon designs, because even though Dad hates him, Tony still yearns for approval.

He can’t-won’t, sleep until he’s better.

When Tony is twelve, Dad beats him so badly that he ends up in the hospital for a week.

Tony hadn’t even done anything wrong this time, hadn’t tried to show Dad his projects, hadn’t even noticed he was home. Dad had been gone again, searching for Captain America, and things had been...peaceful, for once. Tony had been sitting at his desk reading a book when Dad stormed in.

His rage was almost tangible.

“I couldn’t fucking find him, Tony”, Dad yelled between hits and kicks. Tony tried to curl up to protect himself, but a sharp kick to his ribs sends him reeling. He gasps, and Dad shouts, “I lost Steve, and I fucking got stuck with you instead! A worthless, useless, pussy of a boy!”

Tony wakes up a day later, confused, groggy, and panicking because he can’t see out of his left eye, but Jarvis tries to calm him as the doctor lists off his injuries.

A concussion, three broken ribs, internal bleeding caused by a rib puncturing his spleen, and some heavy bruising and swelling. If Jarvis hadn’t found him, he would have died.

Not for the first time, Tony wishes he were dead.

He’s numb, but he accidentally cuts himself in his lab one day and it makes him feel...better. Centered.

Alive.

Stealing razors is easy.

Bringing it across his skin and making himself bleed is somehow even easier.

Howard sees and smacks Tony so hard he tastes blood, but for once, he doesn’t care.

It makes him feel better. Not even Howard can take that away from him.

He goes to MIT, and his father hounds him for bigger, better weapon designs.

Tony hates himself for being afraid, for still wanting love and attention from Howard. He’s not a dumb child anymore; he knows that he rarely gets what he wants (he can’t even make a friend; he has to build himself one, and after the press conference Tony walks away with bruised ribs), but he’s still hopeful, like some stupid child.

He’s a genius. So why does he keep acting this way?

And then, Tony meets Rhodey.

Rhodey is everything that Tony has ever wanted, but has never deserved. He’s funny, he’s kind, he defends Tony when other students make fun of him, he lets Tony sprawl on top of him when he’s desperate for touch (and Tony is desperate for touch a lot).

Rhodey is comfort and safety, and he’ll probably leave just like everyone else, but Tony will let himself have this nice thing for once.

Even if it doesn’t last.

Soon enough, Rhodey becomes suspicious.

Tony’s noticed that others downplay his intelligence, but Rhodey is a genius too. He notices Tony’s strange eating habits, the way he flinches when people move suddenly around him, the way he hides snacks around the dorm, the way he curls himself into small spaces when he’s scared.

Rhodey’s asked, but Tony has deflected every time. Rhodey, the saint that he is, drops it but Tony knows that he won’t be able to hide forever.

That day comes sooner than Tony would like.

He’s on the phone with an enraged Howard, who has called him and his latest designs “worthless garbage”, who wonders what he did to get stuck with “such a fuck up for a kid.” Tony is shaking and trying so hard not to cry that he doesn’t hear Rhodey enter the room.

At least he isn’t here to hit me.

Howard screams, “Don’t fucking call this house until you do better!” and hangs up.

Tony runs a trembling hand through his hair and flinches when he hears, “What the fuck was that?”

There is fire in Rhodey’s eyes, a fire that Tony isn’t used to seeing from Rhodey. He’s seen Rhodey

mad, but never like this. Not angry enough to kill. And while a tiny part of Tony’s brain knows that Rhodey isn’t mad at him, a larger part of him is so terrified that he’s curling up under his desk before he can think about it. “I’m sorry, okay, I’m sorry, please don’t be mad because I can fix it, I promise I can I just need to be better, but Rhodey, please don’t be mad.”

Rhodey crouches in front of him, but keeps a distance. Tony tries to back up and involuntarily whimpers when he realizes that he has nowhere to go, that he’s not safe, that Rhodey can see him, so he’s in danger, danger, danger.

“Hey, Tones, it’s okay,” Rhodey says gently. “ I’m really sorry I scared you. Can you come out? I promise I won’t hurt you.”

Tony frantically shakes his head, fully expecting Rhodey to ignore him because, when they aren’t hitting him, that’s what people do. But he never feels Rhodey’s hands on his arms, never even hears him sigh frustratedly. Instead he hears, “That’s okay. Can I touch you?”

Tony wants to shake his head, wants to beg Rhodey to leave him alone, but he doesn’t. He can’t. Because this is Rhodey.

Even now, he knows that Rhodey won’t hurt him. He still can’t leave the comfort of his tiny space, though, so he offers Rhodey his hand. Rhodey clasps it tightly over his own and rubs his thumb over Tony’s knuckles. The gesture is small, but soothing, and Tony feels tears spring to his eyes.

Rhodey is so good, and Tony is a bad person who doesn’t deserve him.

“I’m sorry I scared you earlier, Tones. I was just so mad.”

“It’s okay. I piss a lot of people off. Miracle you haven’t run off yet, really -”

“I’m gonna stop you right there.” Rhodey keeps his voice low and soothing, and Tony hates himself for taking comfort in it. “I’m not mad at you. I’m mad at Howard.”

Tony is confused. Rhodey’s mad at Howard? But Howard’s right. It’s Tony who is the worthless, useless, fuck-up. It’s not Howard’s fault that Tony is so terrible.

“All of those things he said about you Tony? They’re not true. You’re not useless, you’re not worthless; you’re not a disappointment. Howard is a jealous, bitter old fuck, but that’s not your fault. It’s his, and you deserve so much more than what you’ve gotten, and I’m so, so fucking sorry. I know that big brain of yours is probably telling you otherwise, but I want you to listen to me, okay? There’s nothing wrong with you, and you do not deserve it.

Tony’s crying before Rhodey finishes. No one except for Jarvis has told him any of that before, and to hear it from Rhodey means everything. He hates that Rhodey knows, is so deeply ashamed, but he slowly uncurls and comes out from underneath the desk. He hesitates before throwing himself into Rhodey’s lap, but Rhodey says, “C’mere, Tones,” and Tony throws himself at him.

Rhodey catches him. Every time.

Things aren’t weird between them after that. Tony thought that it would get weird for a while, but nothing has changed. Rhodey doesn’t just accept Tony’s quirks anymore (which has been enough for Tony in the first place); now, Rhodey tries to actively understand them.

Tony loves him.

Jarvis comes to MIT to tell Tony that he’s been diagnosed with lung cancer. Tony cries, and Jarvis reassures Tony that he’ll be just fine, and Tony has such a bad panic attack after Jarvis leaves the next morning that Rhodey nearly calls an ambulance.

Three and a half weeks later, his mother calls and her words make his blood run cold.

“Oh, tesoro, I’m so sorry. I’m so, so sorry, sweetheart, but Jarvis passed away last night.”

He goes home for the funeral and stays for a week. When he comes back to campus, he has two broken ribs, a limp, fractured cheekbones, and a black eye that he covers with foundation. Rhodey narrows his eyes, and before he can speak, Tony hurriedly passes it off as a lab accident.

“Things explode around me all the time, Rhodey, god you should know this by now.”

Rhodey huffs and shakes his head, but he drops it, and Tony breathes a sigh of relief. Tony doesn’t have the energy to talk about this with him right now (or ever), and Rhodey asks about Howard so often that Tony knows that Rhodey is sure of the fact that Tony gets hit at home and he’s just waiting for Tony to confirm it. Tony can’t, won’t, confirm it even to Rhodey. His former nanny squealed once, and she was gone the next day. Tony can’t afford to lose Rhodey, and Howard could make people disappear in the blink of an eye. So Tony would never tell him that Howard had hit him, not even because Tony had made him angry again, but simply because, “Jarvis isn’t here to protect you now, is he, boy?”

It’s routine, and Tony’s heart no longer races whenever they go through this, because his mind worries about almost everything else, but Rhodey has never been, and never will be one of them. He sees Rhodey and instead of screaming danger, danger, danger, his mind calms and says, love, comfort, safety. Safety is a foreign feeling to Tony, and he relishes in it whenever he’s near Rhodey. Rhodey will never hit him. Rhodey will never starve him, or tell him he’s worthless, that he hates him, and that Tony should go die. Rhodey is kind, he is gentle, and he never drags Tony out of tiny spaces that he crams himself in when he needs to feel safe. Rhodey tries to coax him out with a low, soothing voice and gentle words, and when Tony refuses to come out, he asks Tony if he can touch him before taking his hand in his own.

Tony gets hit at home. It’s an unspoken thing between them, but there are many of those.

Anxiety leaves him alone for once. Depression wraps her claws around his very being and refuses to let go. He drags a ball and chain with him wherever he goes, and no matter what he does, the crushing weight never lifts. Depression sounds like his father; only instead of shouting, she whispers horrible, worthless, bad person, you deserve to get hit, no one could love you until he takes a razor to his ankle just to make the voice shut up.

Depression tells him that Jarvis got cancer and died to get away from Tony, that he never loved Tony, and that it was the only way Jarvis could get away from him. Not even a razor can stop that, and Tony cries, and cries, and cries, because if Jarvis couldn’t love him, then who could? Not his father or mother, that’s for sure. Rhodey says he loves him, but Jarvis did too, and that was a lie, so surely Rhodey must be lying too. The thoughts crush him, but he puts on a brave face to avoid worrying Rhodey. Even if Rhodey abandons him eventually, he’s here now, and Tony hates worrying him. Despite his exhaustion, he gets out of bed, goes to class, hangs out with Rhodey, and works in the lab. He showers every other day, and he tries to eat regularly, but it’s so hard because he’s just not hungry. His masks work nonetheless, and Rhodey stays off his back.

He meant to get out of bed hours ago, but even breathing takes up too much energy. Rhodey is curled up beside him, arms wrapped around his middle. He runs fingers through Tony’s hair, causing Tony to blink sleepily. He’s so tired, but he can’t sleep.

“What’s wrong, Tones?” Rhodey murmurs against his hair. “Talk to me.”

He can’t.

He’s tried, but he can’t.

An idea comes to him.

He’s been toying with the idea since he was young, about eight years old, but he’s never tried. It used to scare him, and it still does, but it’s his only option at this point. Jarvis is dead, and Howard hates him, and Mom hasn’t spoken to him in two months, and Rhodey’s worried, and Tony is exhausted. His masks are falling apart, he’s falling apart, and Rhodey saw cuts on his ankle and Tony had to play it off like another lab accident, and now Rhodey’s watching him like a hawk. Howard is becoming more demanding, more threatening than ever before now that Jarvis is dead, and Tony can’t take it anymore. He has panic attacks that completely deplete his already low energy. Everything is too much; he’ll never escape unless he does this.

He’s better off dead.

Rhodey’s ROTC buddies drag him out of their apartment to go to a party, and Tony knows that this will be his only chance. Rhodey has been watching him too closely; he’ll never be able to do this if he’s here. He sees Rhodey off with a cheerful, “Have fun, sugarplum!” He knows Rhodey will be gone for awhile, so he puts on his pajamas, makes some popcorn, and watches Back to the Future. When it’s over, he turns the television off, washes his bowl, and retreats to his bedroom. He should be anxious, but he isn’t. He should go searching for Rhodey, beg him to talk him down, but he won’t. This is what Tony wants, what he needs.

It’s better this way. Rhodey won’t have to worry about him, and he’ll be free from Howard. Free from the anxiety, the depression, the terror that he feels every single day of his goddamn life. He’ll never get hit again, and maybe, just maybe, he’ll see Jarvis again.

The pros outweigh the cons. It’s an easy decision.

The blood pools from his wrists. He’s heard of people regretting it, but that’s not the case for Tony.

For the first time, he is at peace.

He wakes to an obnoxious beeping sound.

A hand runs through his hair and he involuntarily leans into the touch. Soft lips kiss his forehead, and he forces his eyes to open, hoping to see Jarvis. When his vision finally focuses, he has to blink back tears of sadness and disappointment.

Rhodey’s mother smiles softly at him. Tony loves Mama Rhodes, knows that she’s the closest thing to a mother he has, but if Mama Rhodes is here, that means Tony is alive.

He failed. Surprise surprise. God, he hates himself.

Someone is crying, but it isn’t him. His face is dry. Tony decides to ignore it for now. He doesn’t have the energy to deal with it.

“Hey, sweetheart,” Mama Rhodes says. She brushes his bangs from his forehead. “You gave us a pretty good scare there.”

He’s disappointed her. He’s always disappointing someone.

“What happened?”

Tony knows what happened. Someone found him and called an ambulance. But who found him? Rhodey was out.

“I found you, Tony.” Tony freezes. No, no, no, no. He slowly turns his head, hoping against hope that he’s wrong, that it didn’t happen, that he’s imagining it. But when he sees Rhodey on the other side of the bed, face wet with tears and eyes bloodshot and puffy, Tony feels his blood run cold. His best friend found him and had to save him. “I came back from the party, because I knew something was wrong, and I found you. You were unconscious, and god Tony, I’ve never been so scared in my life. I’ve been here the entire time. Mom and Dad just got here about an hour ago. Tony...Your parents are coming. My dad went to go find them.”

Tony finally cries. He can’t even kill himself right, and now Howard is going to do it for him.

The doctors recommend that Tony receive inpatient treatment. Howard refuses.

Mom cries, and Howard shouts.

“I can’t believe you would fucking embarrass me like this, Anthony! Did you even think about how this would look for the company? For me? Do you want people thinking I’m a piece of shit, Anthony? It sure fucking seems like it! You’re so goddamn selfish. All you ever think about it yourself, and I’ve had it!”

Howard gets kicked out. Tony’s mother gives him a hug and a teary kiss, tells him she loves him, and leaves.

She doesn’t come back, and Tony is numb.

In October, days after he is released from the hospital, rumors start circulating about Howard’s parenting. Howard holds a press conference, and Tony is forced to lie to a sea of reporters and tell the world that he and his father have a great relationship, that Howard isn’t abusive, that his father loves him and he loves his father in equal measure.

When all is said and done, Howard grabs Tony by the wrist and says, “If you ever embarrass me like this again, Anthony, and you’ll wish that you had cut a little deeper. Lord knows I do.”

He releases Tony’s wrist and saunters off. Tony goes to rub his still-healing wrist and sees blood.

Howard popped a stitch. Tony doesn’t even care.

Go to class, work in the labs, do homework, hang out with Rhodey, eat, shower, sleep, repeat.

Tony’s never been one for monotony, but he needs structure a bit more than he’s willing to admit right now. Rhodey needs it too, if the way he’s sticking to Tony like glue is an indicator.

In December, everything changes.

Mom is dead, and Tony cries for her.

But Howard is dead, too.

I’m free, Tony thinks as he stares at Howard’s body. I’m free.

The mansion is quiet without Howard. Even when he wasn’t physically present, Tony was always tense, sensing danger. But Tony, for the first time ever, is calm as he roams his childhood home. Rhodey is with him, and that probably has something to do with it, but Tony doesn’t care. He’ll take whatever peace he can get at this point.

Tony runs through the mansion halls, eager to show Jarvis his new pet. It’s a frog he found in the pond, but it’s not poisonous or anything. He knows. Uncle Daniel taught Tony all about frogs once while he was staying with him and Aunt Peggy. He doesn’t have a name for the frog yet, but Jarvis will help him with that. Jarvis is good at those kinds of things.

“Jarvis, Jarvis, look what I got!” Tony shouts as he skids into the kitchen. Only Jarvis isn’t there. One of the cooks, Andrew, is. Tony doesn’t mind. He likes Andrew. But that’s not what makes Tony stops in his tracks.

Dad is there too.

Dad wasn’t supposed to be back for another three weeks. Tony’s mouth goes dry, and his heart begins to pound. Dad dismisses Andrew. Tony resists the urge to beg him to stay. It’ll only be worse if he begs.

“What’s that you got there, Anthony?”

“A….A frog, Dad.” He blinks back tears. Tears only make Dad angrier, and Tony’s so, so tired of being a failure and making him angry.

“Why did you bring a frog into this house? Did you want it as a pet?”

Tony nods, too afraid to speak. Howard laughs. “You can’t have a pet, boy. Only good people can have pets. And you know what you are, right?”

“A bad person,” Tony parrots back.

“That’s right. But you never learn, do you?”

Tony braces himself, but Howard’s fist never comes. Nothing could have prepared him for the white-hot pain he feels when Howard throws the boiling water on him. Tony cries, he can’t help it, the pain is just too much, and Howard smacks him. “It’ll get worse until you learn your lesson, boy.”

Tony jolts awake and gasps, chest heaving in panic. He can feel the water on his body, can feel the burns; he wraps his arms around himself and rocks back and forth on his bed, waiting for the pain to go away. He can’t cry, because Howard will hear him, and it’ll be so much worse if Howard hears him crying. He can hear Howard walking down the hall, can smell his cologne, and Tony swallows the bile rising in his throat.

It takes twenty agonizing minutes for Tony to realize that none of it is real. Howard is dead. He can’t be walking down the hall. He’s dead, so Tony can’t smell his cologne. Tony resists the lingering urge to hide in his closet, telling himself that it was just a dream, that Howard can’t hurt him anymore.

He chalks the nightmare up to the stress of the funeral and tells himself that it’s officially over, that he can relax.

The nightmares don’t stop by the time Tony returns to MIT for his final semester. If anything, they become more intense now that he’s away from the mansion. He wants to curl up and sleep next to Rhodey, to soak up the comfort so badly that he aches with it, but he doesn’t want to let Rhodey know that he’s having nightmares. If Rhodey knew, then he would have to tell Rhodey about getting hit.

Tony’s worked too hard to keep his secret safe.

He and Rhodey are watching a movie when Howard appears.

“A movie?” He sneers. “You’re wasting time, boy. The military won’t wait because you wanted to watch a movie.”

Tony leans into Rhodey and buries his face in his stomach, Rhodey’s arm automatically moving to rub Tony’s back. Tony ignores Howard and chalks the hallucination up to being tired.

It’s not real, it’s not real, you’re just tired, it’s not real.

Howard’s hand wraps around Tony’s throat, and Tony gasps for air. “You’ll never amount to anything, Anthony. I can’t believe I got stuck with such a fuck up for a kid.”

He shakes, and Rhodey holds him tight.

The nightmares will pass soon. At least Tony hopes they will.

When the phone rings, he’s terrified that it’s Howard calling to berate him. He flinches if Rhodey moves suddenly, bracing himself for a punch. He can’t sleep at night because the terror keeps him awake; his heart races over every unexpected sound because his mind thinks it’s Howard. He curls up under the desk he can hardly fit under whenever an experiment goes wrong, his mind going Rhodey won’t be able to find you and hit you, it’s safe under there, you need to hide to he doesn’t hit you.

Rhodey has never hit him, has never even raised his voice at him. The terror is irrational, Tony knows, but he can’t stop because he’s just too afraid of everything.

But it’s fine.

He’s always fine.

He sees Howard wherever he goes. In class, in the lab, in the living room of his apartment, Howard is always there. Just standing, silently disapproving.

He’s upgrading DUM-E when it happens.

He hears Howard creep up behind him, smells his cologne. Tony stiffens as Howard walks into his line of sight, sneers, and says, “You’re wasting time, boy. Those fucking robots of yours aren’t worth anything. I wouldn’t have to hit you if you would just fucking learn.”

And then Tony feels Howard’s fist connect with his face, feels the spit as Howard shouts, feels the violent tug of his hair. It’s too late to hide, he’s not safe, he’s not safe, he’s not -

It stops as suddenly as it starts, and Tony barely makes it to the toilet before he throws up everything in his stomach (which isn’t a lot. He’s just not hungry these days).

It was so real. Howard was there, Tony knows it, he felt it. He smelled the cologne, felt Howard’s fists, felt his hand yanking his hair. It’s sleep deprivation. It has to be. There’s no other explanation.

Tony doesn’t sleep that night. He’s too busy shaking in terror. Howard is standing next to his dresser, sneering at him.

“You’ll never be free of me, boy.”

“This class is so fucking useless.”

Fucking useless.

You’re fucking useless, boy.

Tony quakes as Rhodey morphs into Howard. You’re fucking useless, you’ll never amount to anything, I hate you, I hope you die.

Hot water on his body.

Hot metal in his hands. Then, Howard’s sharp laughter.

Calloused hands around his throat.

Shiny black loafers connecting with his ribs.

“-ones, hey, it’s okay! Tones, it’s okay, I’m right here, it’s okay!” Something grabs his hand and Tony can’t help it. He’s so terrified that he shrieks.

“Don’t hit me! I don’t care what else you do, just don’t hit me!”

Stop fucking crying, boy.

Pussy.

Stark men are made of iron.

“Tony, it’s Rhodey.”

Rhodey? He’s here? Where? All Tony can see is Howard, Howard with his fist raised -

“I’m not going to hit you, Tony. It’s 1:30 PM. We’re in our apartment in Cambridge. We go to MIT, and I was ranting about our literature course. Howard is dead. No one is going to hit you.”

Howard? Dead? But Tony sees him; he can’t be dead.

“I’ve got you, Tones. It’s just me and you here. You’re okay.”

“Rhodey?” He still sees Howard. It can’t be true. But he hears Rhodey, and Rhodey would never lie to him, would never hit him.

“Yeah, Tones. It’s Rhodey. What do you need?”

“Talk to me, I need…”

I need to make sure you’re real.

And Rhodey rambles until the hallucination stops. After it’s over, Tony curls up in Rhodey’s lap. The jig is up. Rhodey knows about the hallucinations. Knows that Howard used to hit him. Yet he hasn’t laughed at Tony once, hasn’t told him that he must have done something to deserve it.

He rubs Tony’s back just the way he knows Tony likes, and Tony soaks up the comfort.

Tony is physically, mentally, and emotionally exhausted.

He can’t sleep, he can’t eat, he keeps seeing Howard, and he cuts more than ever before, and Rhodey’s so worried, but everything is just too much. He’s with Rhodey in Philadelphia for spring break. They’re curled up together in his childhood bed. It’s 1:00 in the morning, and Tony’s crying. Howard has followed him here, too, and Tony hates himself for being so afraid. Howard is dead, and he’s still finding new ways to torment Tony.

He chokes on a sob, trying not to wake up Rhodey and failing. The arms around him tighten, and Tony realizes that this is one of the only times he’s ever allowed himself to cry.

“What’s wrong, Tones?” He feels lips on the top of his head, and that just makes him cry harder. He doesn’t deserve Rhodey’s kindness, but he’s crying too hard to say anything. The tears come hard and fast, but he can’t stop. He hates himself, hates how he’s so scared of Howard even though the bastard is dead, hates how he throws up everything because he smells Howard’s cologne, hates that he can’t work on his bots because Howard appears and sneers at him, hates that he sees Howard wherever he goes, hates that he can’t find any fucking peace.

Tony cries for hours. He knows, because the sun eventually comes up, and Mama Rhodes eventually comes into the room. She stays, too. Tony loves her, but he doesn’t deserve her either.

You don’t deserve anything, Howard says. I made you. You’ve done nothing. Remember that.

Rhodey rubs his back, and Mama Rhodes talks to him. Tony’s throat is raw, but the tears refuse to stop. Distantly, he hears Rhodey tell his mother that he’s been crying for twelve hours, and part of him feels ashamed, but hasn’t he earned it? Hasn’t he gone through enough? Jarvis always told him that crying was nothing to be ashamed of, and Rhodey has always echoed that statement. So what if it’s been twelve hours? He’s been through years of torment, and he’s never been allowed to express how sad he is for one fucking minute.

So right now, in this moment, he lets himself cry. It’s been twelve hours, but that’s not nearly enough to make up for a lifetime of pain and fear.

He hears Howard huff angrily and knows that he’ll never truly be free.

#THIS IS A LONG ONE Y'ALL #my fic #abuse tw

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kayoiwritingarchivies · 6 years

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TITLE: Post mortem viventem

CHAPTER TITLE: THREE: The remedy for dirt is soap and water. The remedy for dying is living.

WARNINGS AND RATINGS: Rated T for swearing, major character death and suicide

FANDOMS: Detroit: Become Human

SUMMARY: So, if androids don’t have souls, why does Connor see the ghosts of shut down Deviants? Why does he see ghosts in general? (In which Connor sees more than he is meant to, and it changes less than you think.)

An android, a human, and 4 ghosts arrive at a sex club. Sound like the start of a bad joke.

Daniel has his hands over Cole’s eyes for a while, before Rupert sighs and pushes his hat onto Cole’s head, firmly pressing it and using the brim of the cap to cover Cole’s lines of sight, down before picking the kid up and placing him on his shoulders.

Henry looks around, and Connor does as well.

Hank remarks about “Sexiest Androids in town” and “No wonder you wanted to come here Connor!” Which Connor ignores, He sees the androids in the glass cells, hands pressed against the sheer surface, and Connor can only think “Will they have ghosts too?”

There are ghosts too. Androids with translucent bodies, chattering uselessly into the air, walking through people and walls.

When they arrive at the room the man was murdered in, the man’s ghost is there too, and he’s not wearing any pants.

Connor pointedly looks away and refuses to look anywhere but the wall in front of him, Daniel glances at Cole, who’s covering his own eyes while Rupert mutters a “Dude, please.” And bores his gaze right into Connor, while Henry just covers his eyes and mutters “I already saw one of those I don’t need to see another.”

“What’s that meant to mean?” Daniel asks, still looking at Cole, refusing to look down.

“Carlos slept in the nude.” Henry replies, grimacing.

“Oh, that sounds horrible. At least he died clothed.”

The corner of Connor’s mouth twitched.

The man’s ghost (completely oblivious to the 3 highly uncomfortable ghosts and an uncomfortable android) spreads his arms wide, showing off more of his…assets, and Rupert muttered a “Dude please”

And then the man’s eyes somehow rolled back into his head as he slumped forward, revealing a translucent Traci, holding a shoe in one hand, Thirium eternally dripping from her nose.

“Hi?” She says hesitantly, giving a little wave. Cole waves back.

Connor frowns at the ghostly body on the floor, steps over it and examines the body of the man.

“He didn’t die of a heart attack…he was strangled.” Connor deduces, studying the bruising around his neck.

“That means Reed is an idiot.” Daniel says, nodding seriously. Rupert nods as well, despite having no idea who “Reed” is.

“Doesn’t mean anything. Could have just been rou-” Hank begins to say, only for the Traci to unknowingly talk over him.

“No, that’s wrong!”

Connor turns to face the spirit of the Traci, and looks at her, puzzled.

The Traci steels herself, and says “He began to hit us. He kept hitting us, until I broke. There were two of us. She had blue hair, and something happened, and she put her hands around his neck, and squeezed.”

“Us?” Connor asks, and Hank looks at him like he’s crazy, and Daniel is mouthing “Abort Plan, Abort Plan, Abort Plan!”

“He wanted to play with two girls.” The Traci replied, gripping her forearms like her life depended on it.

“Where is the other deviant?” Connor questioned, eyes narrowed.

“I don’t know.”

Connor blinks, and turns to Hank and says “There were two androids. The missing one is a Deviant, Lieutenant.”

Hank, to his credit, manages to school his shocked face into a more neutral expression, and says “Can you track it?”

Connor looks at his crew of questionably helpful ghost helpers and asks “Want to find a murderer?”

Daniel yells “FINALLY! SOME ACTION!” and punches the air, while Cole cheers and Rupert leans away from Daniel, trying to avoid his flailing limbs and Henry sighs, and goes, “We’ll be happy to.”

-LINE BREAK-

They find the deviant in the warehouse in the back by abusing Hank’s bank account.

Well, they find the original deviant, but then another, angry deviant appeared and attacked Hank and Connor with a screwdriver and very dangerous looking shoes, which honestly scared Henry more than needed, seeing as Henry is already dead and therefore is under no threat from the angry deviants but the point still stands.

Connor and the two deviants grapple outside, and Connor manages to grab the gun and he aims, finger on the trigger and-

“Do you want to see more ghosts being made?”

-he doesn’t shoot. The gun clatters out of his hands and he get kicked in the face, and the two deviants hold each other’s hands, and the two of them leave, climbing over the chain-link fence and running into the night.

“Maybe it’s better this way.” Hank says, turning back into the club, leaving Connor with the ghosts that only he can see, LED blinking between yellow and blue.

-LINE BREAK-

Hank doesn’t talk to Connor while in the car. Not at the liquor store, not at his house, not at all.

They stop at Riverside Bridge, and Connor remains in the car while Hank gets out and sits on the bench facing the river. Cole squints at the park before running out of the car and spinning on the merry-go-round, Henry hurrying after him. Rupert sighs and gets out as well to inspect the tree, his jacket given to the Traci, who named herself Ganymede, who was wandering around the park, before settling onto the swings and slowing swinging herself back and forth. Daniel decided to just trail after Connor, who follows after Hank.

(Surprisingly enough, Daniel does not vocalise his disdain for Ganymede’s inclusion of the Ghost troupe, and instead just sulks behind Connor.)

“Nice view, huh?” Hank asks, staring out over the river, towards the bank that faces Canada. “I used to come here a lot before…” and he trails off, taking a swig out of the bottle of scotch he brought with him.

Connor stands before a moment and then faces Hank and asks “Can I ask you a personal question, Lieutenant?”

“Do all androids ask so many personal questions or is it just you?”

Connor thinks for a minute, and then, carefully constructs a lie. He can’t mention about seeing Cole’s ghost, crying into Henry’s shoulder, so he says “I saw a photo of a child on your kitchen table. It was your son, right?”

Hank is silent for a few minutes, before saying “Yeah, his name was Cole.”

Connor mulls over this answer, before asking “Before what?��

At that question, Cole stops his spinning and looks over at Connor. He’s boring into the side of his head with a blank stare.

“Hm?” Hank asks.

“You said… ‘I used to come here a lot before…’ Before what?”

“Before…” Hank says, and he takes a pause, taking time to think of an answer most likely. “Before nothing.”

Connor tilts his head, before walking towards the railing of the bridge.

“We’re not making any progress on this investigation.” Connor says, gesturing with his arms. “The deviants have nothing in common. They’re all different models, produced at different times, in different places.”

“Well, there must be some link.” Both Daniel and Hank say at the same time, and Daniel mutters “Jinx.” A second later.

“What they have in common is this…obsession with rA9… It’s almost like some kind of…myth. Something they invented that wasn’t part of their original programming.”

“Who the heck is rA9? I have literally never heard of the term before today.” Daniel says blandly, and Connor ignores the statement for now.

“Androids believing in god… Fuck, what is this world coming to?”

Connor looks at Hank and then says “You seem preoccupied, Lieutenant… is it something to do with what happened back at the Eden Club?”

Hank ponders the question for a minute and then says “Those two girls… They just wanted to be together. They really seemed…in love.”

“You seemed troubled Lieutenant.” Connor says, irony coating his words. “I didn’t think machines could have such an effect on you.”

“What about you Connor?” Hank asks, looking at him in the eye. He gets up and walks towards his slowly, his steps crunching in the snow. “You look human, you sound human, but what are you really?”

“I’m whatever you want me to be Lieutenant.” Connor says, returning Hank’s gaze. “Your partner, your drinking buddy…” Connor takes a pause, before continuing. “Or just a machine, designed to accomplish a task.”

Hank looks him in the eye and says “You could have shot those two girls, but you didn’t.”

Hank roughly shoves him in the shoulder, causing Connor to stumble back, and Daniel and Rupert to go “Hey, what are you doing?”

“Some scruple suddenly enters your program?” Hank asks.

Connor looks at the ghostly form of Ganymede sitting on the swings, at Rupert’s ghost perched on the bench, Daniel staring at him, Cole sitting on the Merry-go-round, Henry sitting very still. There are other ghosts too, of different androids and humans alike, speckled around the park. Kids who will never grow up playing on the equipment, adults who are bitter and cold, androids who look at them like they’re some kind of puzzle that needs to be solved.

With out thinking, Connor says “No, it’s because, I didn’t want to see any more ghosts.”

Hank raises an eyebrow and asks “Ghosts?”

Connor realises his mistake, and there was no way to fix it, so he just continues. “I see ghosts Lieutenant. Both of androids, and of humans.”

Hank looks at him and says “I don’t believe you.”

“Then look behind you Lieutenant.”

Hank turns, to see the play equipment move by themselves, he suddenly feels like the park has dropped several degrees in temperature. If Hank strains his ears, he can hear faint chattering, and static, the kind you hear from a broken radio or TV.

Hank turns to look at Connor, and says “What the fuck?”

Connor shrugs, and says “I don’t know. I’ve just been able to see them since my activation.” Connor pauses for a moment, listening to Cole say “Tell dad I said hello!”

“Cole says hello.” Connor repeats, and the colour from Hank’s face drains away as he looks back at the moving play equipment and whisper’s “Cole?”

Connor repeats Cole’s next words. “It wasn’t your fault.”

Hank kneels in the snow, and Daniel tilts his head and says “It’s probably for the best.”

“Are you afraid to die Connor?” Hank asks, staring into the snow as if it could give him answers.

Connor kneels into the snow in front of him, and says “Maybe. I’m not even sure I would even get be a ghost myself.”

-LINE BREAK-

If an android isn’t alive, then how do they have ghosts? Are they just vengeful and angry at humans? Do they have unfinished business?

Why do androids have ghosts, if they are not considered alive?

-LINE BREAK-

Ping, ping, ping.

Hank glances at Connor, who is doing ticks with his coin again, and when Connor passes it into the hand closest to Hank, Hank snatches the coin and mutters “You’re beginning to piss me off with that coin Connor.”

Connor to his credit, goes “Sorry Lieutenant.”

Cole just goes “Aww, but Dad, they were cool”

“Your father can’t hear you Cole.”

“Oh yeah, I keep for-get-ting about that.”

“How do you forget that your father can’t hear you?”

“…”

“Connor, I don’t know who the fuck you’re talking too, but quit it before someone calls you a deviant and shoots you.”

“Sorry Lieutenant.”

-LINE BREAK-

There are two human ghosts in the lobby.

The first one is a security guard, conversing in low tones to other ghost, one of the operators for the company and they perk up at seeing Connor’s entourage of ghosts, and begin to wave them over.

Connor goes too, and the ghosts look at him questioningly, and Daniel jabs a thumb at him and says “He can see dead people. Whoop.”

The operator nods, and says “My name is Ernest Hemmingway, I was trying to go alert security when…well…” before gesturing to the bullet wound, right where his heart would be. “I got a bit unlucky.”

Rupert squints at the bullet wound and mutters “A bit unlucky? You literally die and all you can say is that you got a bit unlucky?”

Connor ignores Rupert and looks at the guard.

“M’ name’s Scott Fitzgerald. One of the four androids drew a gun, and I was reaching for mine when it shot me, right in the heart. Next thing I know, M’ having an out-of-body experience and a ginger girl is beating by partner black ‘n blue.” The Guard says, pointing at the desk. “M’ partner is still alive, thank god.”

Connor nods, and turns to see Hank talking to Officer Wilson, Cole halfway through a wall and shouting, Ganymede wandering around the lobby area and Henry close behind, Daniel leaning against a wall feigning sleep while Rupert quietly argues with Charles.

The scene is peaceful enough, if it weren’t for the two bodies on the floor, blood pooling around them.

-LINE BREAK-

Richard Perkins is in fact, a massive prick.

“Androids investigating Androids. What a world we’ve come too.” He says, looking at Connor like he’s a particularly interesting bug he found in his garden.

Connor manages to hold his tongue, but Rupert and Daniel whisper “Yeah, like Humans investigating Humans, you prick.”

Ganymede snorts at that while Connor makes his own observations of the room. There’s not much though, until Officer Wilson mentions the Androids in the staff kitchen.

So, naturally, Connor goes into the kitchen.

There are three androids. There’s a 1/3 chance he’ll pick the one that’s a deviant, and he very sure that the one on the far left is a deviant, judging by the way it keeps glancing at the door.

“What a horrible liar. At least the Traci’s were better at hiding their emotions.” Rupert comments, and Connor can’t help but agree.

-LINE BREAK-

Connor nearly died. His Thirium Pump Regulator was torn out and it was only through the actions of Rupert that he’s alive, and a new ghost was made. The JB300 is yelling at Connor, while Daniel, Henry and Rupert try to restrain the ghost from trying to kill Connor (again).

To be fair, Connor did shoot the Android, but the android ripped out the thing that keeps him alive, so fair is fair.

However, Rupert does know he saw Connor’s spirit flicker when his Thirium Pump Regulator was forcefully removed, like Connor was close to dying, despite his numerous denials that he might be alive.

It makes Rupert worried.

-LINE BREAK-

The ghost of the JB300 doesn’t stay, which Daniel is grateful for. The JB300 instead, yells at Connor, calls him a murderer, tries to kill him. And Connor…doesn’t do anything, and just stands there, enduring the abuse the ghost is throwing at him until Rupert grows tired and knocks the android ghost unconscious with a well-aimed strike at the back of the head.

“Connor, you can’t take this guy’s shit. He nearly killed you, for fucks sake!” Rupert yells later, Daniel nodding in agreement.

“But I am replaceable.” Connor replies, causing Daniel to blow up at him.

“Yeah, sure, but will the next one be able to see us, idiot!?”

Connor doesn’t say anything, and looks at Henry and Ganymede, who look at him with dead eyes.

“You are not replaceable Connor.” Henry says, sitting on the JB300 to keep him from moving.

“You’re the only one who can see us, right?” Ganymede says, crossing her legs on the floor.

Cole pokes his head through the wall a few minutes later, followed by Scott and Ernest. “I heard shouting. Is everything okay?” Cole says, tilting his head to the side.

No one says anything. No one has too.

-LINE BREAK-

Connor idles at his borrowed desk, playing with the coin he stole back from Hank. The station is nearly empty now, with only the androids and the night-shift officers walking around.

Officer Miller stands up, stretches, and grabs his keys, and leaves with his partner to proceed with their night patrol.

There’s a strange sense of foreboding that makes Connor’s Thirium Pump momentary stop beating, and a ghost whispers how Markus is planning to lead a violent riot need the Capitol Park CyberLife Store.

“Officer Miller? Are you patrolling around the Capitol Park area?” Connor asks, and Officer Miller turns and looks at Connor.

“Uh, yeah, I think so? Why?” he asks, looking at Connor.

Connor wrings his hands, and says, “I was just curious. Just…be careful.”

Officer Miller smiles, and says “Sure, Connor.”

Connor looks at a ghost, a PC200, who named themselves Caliban, and in a quiet whisper, says “If it looks like someone is going to kill him or his partner, try and stop it. You have somewhat an effect on the physical, right?”

Caliban looks at him, and says, “I’ll try. Whatever Markus is doing, I don’t like it.”

A human ghost, named Leo Tolstoi, looks up from their place on a desk, and says “I’ll go too.”

Connor gives his thanks, and Officer Miller and his partner leave for the patrol, flanked by two ghosts.

-LINE BREAK-

Later, when Hank and Connor arrive at Kamski’s mansion, Hank receives a call that Officer Miller was held at gunpoint by Markus, and was saved by a ghostly hand appearing out of the dark and forcing Markus to miss the shot, leaving enough time for both Officer Miller and his partner to get back into the police cruiser and retreat. They’re both in shock, but they’ll live.

Caliban and Leo appear later to tell their own versions of the story, and Connor thanks them again.

-LINE BREAK-

Connor looks at the gun in his hands, and where the barrel lines up perfectly with the centre of Chole’s forehead.

Shoot Chloe, and he’ll gain the information needed to complete the investigation.

Or spare her, and leave with nothing.

Connor stares, and his finger tightens around the trigger-

“Are you sure that’s the right decision though?”

-And he shoves the gun back at Kamski, while the ghost of Amanda Stern watches him with an almost disappointed look on his face.

#fanfiction #fanfic #detroit: become human #DBH #dbh connor #dbh rupert #dbh daniel #dbh hk400 #dbh cole #dbh hank #connor sees things #maybe original characters #are they original if I just named some sidecharcters #and had some actual OC that are there to make the plot move forward?

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nate-the-ok · 5 years

Text

Sugar Napkins Glass

One of my larger projects, written in a particular mood, then I got out of the mood. Lost interest. Its a time investment, fair warning

Sugar, Napkins, Glass: Chapter 1

Scrape. Scrape. Scrape. The things sea air does to cream cheese.

Scrape. Scrape. Scrape. (Three more furious scraping sessions)

It was late evening on the isles of Costa Marco, and Greg Sattle was deeply contemplating how drowning actually felt as he psychologically held his nose and cleaned the day`s cream cheese stains from the floors of his seaside café, The Port Side. He certaintly never imagined himself as the owner of some cream-colored scene out of a Martha Stewart Magazine, but crazier things have been done for love. Well perhaps not, Greg thought to himself. Ships were launched. Hundreds, perhaps thousands have died. But no one surely would subject themselves to ten years of imprisonment in a coffee shop. Her name, as apt as names go, has changed over the years. First, it was Elizabeth. Then, it was Liz. Then it was Ellie. After that it was Mom. Now its…well there are a plethora of profanities on Costa Marco relating to nagging old sea hags.

As the sun set over the ocean waves, bubbling and rippling the light from a distance, inducing a trance-like state for all of the barely clothed onlookers, Greg scanned the beaches, reigning down his mighty judgement upon all of god`s creation.

“Perverts. Sicophants. Mankind is a disgusting thing. All of these people, living artificial lives in artificial clothes, with artificial personalities, having sex with each other and drinking and lazing about. The fat jiggling bipeds live meaningless lives, consuming and consuming and consuming. A colony of walruses lives with more honor”

While deep in his sociopathic rants, Greg`s only son and heir to his legacy, Samuel, sauntered over to his father.

“Hey uhh, dad”

Greg hated his son. He was positive that he was the dumbest person on the entire island. No, the entire planet. It wasn`t even that that bothered him. It was his stupid, rage inducing manner of speech. It was a cross between the calm, swaying way of the islanders, and a lifetime of listening to the worst music god ever created. It was like listening to a four year old whine about having wet himself for 23 years. There were many occasions where Greg would chuckle to himself as Sam stubbed his toe on a door, or got beat up by a gang of street thugs. Ah the glories of cosmic justice he thought to himself. Now he approaches, likely to ask for something, as all weak willed individuals do on a regular basis.

“Yes Sam?” Greg said with obvious disdain, mocking Sam`s imperceptiveness, and crying on the inside that his son would always be, that stupid.

“I was just wondering if you wanted to loan me like uh…fifty bucks?”

Another thing that bothered Greg about Sam. He had zero charisma. He came off as needy and useless as he actually was. The only job he could ever get, was washing dishes at the cafe, which somehow, he still showed up late for. You couldn`t send him to military school to straighten him out, because they`d probably kill him for being such an annoying little shit, and say it was an accident. It was that part, that he regretted that his son would die, that really bothered Greg. Why god? Why other than by blood relations should I care about this…

“What exactly for?” Greg retorted

“Um…Im taking a girl on a date and I uh…need some spending money”

It was here that Greg paused. Surely, with this small investment of mere material gains, perhaps this will finally change sam`s silly ways. Hopefully he falls in love with this girl, and eventually she breaks his heart, that always toughens up a man in the end. Good god was sam a virgin? It`s a distinct possibility, but how could he know? Sam never confided in Greg. Ever. What the hell. Maybe it`s worth a shot.

“Sure, here…consider it a bonus…actually it`s not a bonus you`re a terrible worker and if you weren`t my son i`d fire you”

“Thanks dad!” Sam replied with renewed elation, as he scurried out the door, hopping into the old convertible Greg had gave him for his nineteenth birthday. Another failed attempt at manning him up.

“Maybe im just a shitty parent” Greg said out loud to himself.

Maybe he`s a lot of shitty things. However, that`s not nearly the most important part of this story.

“Oh a whisky oh a danny, when will the whisky run dry?” Bellowed each member of the small crew. Caribbean lobsters were rare, but in recent years, their populations blossomed, for almost unfathomable reasons. Regardless, dozens of fishing companies cropped up around Costa Marco, looking to cash in on a commoditiy, which pound for pound, was more valuable than gold. Of this small crew of the “Sandy Boot”, there was Rook, the boats` captain. He was a truck driver, for more years than he cared to remember, or forget for that matter. When the sea called to him, he remembered childhood stories his grandmother told him, of sailors and pirates, of heroes, and most importantly, drunks. Those decades of sitting in the cab of a truck, passing by non-descript highway rest stops and meaningless landmarks gave him a hunger for a real culture, and companionship. Sure there was the occasional bar-room hookup, as many as a guy as old and as fat as him could get but…he wanted a friend. More than anything.

Rook did the song justice, and drained the last swig of whisky from the clear glass bottle. Happily giggling as he spun the thin aluminum wheel around in the cabin making a course for home, while the other members of the crew scoffed in sarcastic disappointment. The small lobster boat only cost the crew a collective fifteen grand to purchase and insure, but had already made them incredible returns. None felt the weight of that more than Trip, the crew`s most experienced fisherman, but also the poorest. You see, Trip was a local to Costa Marco. His ancestors were slaves, and each preceding generation were slaves. First to white men, then to oppressive governments, then to drugs, and finally, to the sea. Many of the ethnic locals to Costa Marco are fishermen. But not all of them were ever good fishermen. All of them, save for Trip. To anybody else, he was just another kid who knocked some poor girl up, and ruined the rest of his life, trying to take care of a kid. To Trip and Louisa, they were in paradise. Sure they lived in a small apartment by the docks. Sure they didn`t own a car, or even have a checking account. What they did have however, was the kind of love that we all refuse to believe is real, and a beautiful baby boy to match. Their life went as followed. Trip would get up early in the morning, and join the rest of the crew on the boat to fish. Louise would wake with the sunrise and feed their child, sipping tea and reading books, gossiping with her neighbors on the beach behind their home. As the sun went down, she would build a fire, and cook a meal of chopped fish and island fruits. When Trip returned, he would walk onto the beach, lay on the sand next to his wife, take his son in his arms, and they would laugh until the fire left their minds, and fell to embers. When the clock struck ten, the three of them would settle down to bed, and the process would begin again. I`d wager that at the time, since Trip had finally been able to bring in good money, they were the happiest people alive.

As that rusty old boat pulled into the docks, and Trip called to Louise, Margo was tying off ropes, and looking over cages that had been damaged, eager to repair them. She was a kind of inquisitive, thoughtful human being that had been completely ensnared by the mere concept of rope in general. She could not explain just how-hold on a second, a woman? On a boat? Believe it or not, yes. A woman on a boat. Perhaps it was because Rook`s guilty pleasure was staring at her ass when she pulled a cage up from the sea. Perhaps it was the fact that on Costa Marco, everyone was too laid back to care at all. In reality, it was the mutual understanding between workers, that if you wanted the money, you worked hard for it, and you weren`t a total bitch, then you could fish like anyone else. It was that kind of atmosphere that Margo really craved. The kind of togetherness and happiness that was alive in the isles of Costa Marco. She could walk the streets on a Friday night, and join any party she wanted. Smile with whoever she wanted, laugh with whoever she wanted, and drink with whoever she wanted. It was her other craving though, that drove her to the fishing industry, and to the seclusion of the house she was able to purchase, just outside of town.

Cinnitar. A strange name for an incredibly popular opioid. It`s popularity wasn`t in it`s nature or it`s flawless marketing. It`s popularity was based on it`s safety. Margo would walk home from the boat after Rook distributed the previous day`s pay, spend a third of it on Cinnitar, and crash at her place, unwinding slowly into a peaceful, yet dreamless sleep. The gimmick associated to Cinnitar was that no matter how much of it you took, you couldn`t die, and there were virtually no side effects. While initially created to humanely kill family pets, when the formula was released to the general public, crafty chemists soon realized the drug`s massive potential. Margo had a massive amount of reasons to take the drug, but only one that she really couldn`t get out of her head. Her Abortion. Breaking up with Grant. She wasn`t supposed to feel guilty. It was the right thing to do. She was taking control of her body, and her life. Where did that ever get her? Where could it have gone? These kinds of questions only frightened her more when she knew Trip`s story, and watched his family eat dinner on the beach a hundred times. She wanted that, more than anything she wanted that, but she made that choice a thousand years and a thousand miles ago, and there was no way to go back. So it was here, that she would lay back on the hammock, ladle some Cinnitar into her arm, and imagine she made the choice she wanted, maybe even the right choice.

Suddenly, the newest member of the crew, Spencer, was knocking at her door. Margo couldn`t even stand to respond, and hoped he would just go away. She only ever invited him over along with the whole crew one time, as a housewarming party, but besides that, she had been a hermit. Spencer though, was persistent, knocking away like an idiot, because he saw her going in there…which yes, means that he followed her.

“Oh well, I guess she was just tired from fishing today. It was pretty hot out” he sighed to himself.

Margo relaxed back into her hammock. She liked Spencer. As far as guys went on all the islands, he was pretty cute. But it had only been…two years? Since she up and left her home in Georgia to find her way in the carribean, just to throw herself at the map and see where she could stick. It had been a long time, she thought. Maybe too long. Maybe she should give Spencer a shot, she thought, but before she could explore that line of reasoning, another wave came over her, and she was further back in that hammock than ever before, further back in her past and her guilt.

Walking home at night on Costa Marco is a very surreal experience. There are Boas hanging in the trees, pigs and dogs scurrying about, and when you hit the city, it`s a complete paradigm shift. There are vibrantly dressed locals and self-proclaimed locals dancing and drinking and laughing, jabbering and swooning to the hastily strummed guitars and battered drums. When Spencer left that small but happy place in the world, he turned down the many streets until he reached his own little cobblestone corner. Really a treasure of an abode, an old colonial townhouse, shoulder to shoulder with the infinite, but not quite well laid out rows of the other townhouses. He turned the old iron key, creaking open the heavy wooden door, into his own little grain scented shelter. Throwing wood into the fireplace, and firing up his laptop, he began to peruse his greatest passion… bread. Artisan, hand crafted, wood baked, the boy was obsessed. You see, Costa Marco was surprisingly devoid of this kind of bread industry. No dish, local or otherwise served or prepared on the islands required it, in fact, one would be looked upon with a small amount of disdain if seen eating a sandwich. This kind of atmosphere suffocated Spencer. He wanted to share his passion for bread with everyone he knew, by opening his own bakery. You could imagine by this description, that Spencer was a simple kind of guy, but in a magnificently pleasant kind of way. Spencer had spent most of his life travelling, as his father and mother were both in the navy, which meant that for the most part, spencer grew up on naval bases and with other navy kids. They all wanted to follow right in line with their parents, as disciplined and honorable scholars, pilots, or sailors. Spencer wanted none of that. All he wanted, was his bakery. It is hard to determine when, where or how he became obsessed with bread, or why frankly anyone cares, but all this interest is a testament to, is the kind of purity of heart Spencer possessed.

“Just a few more weeks” Spencer muttered to himself with a smile,

“And they`ll all see”…He trailed off, sensing he was tired, and rising to his bedroom. With each thunk of the heavy wooden steps he thought of Margo. How pretty she was. How her hair glistened in the midday sun. How the waters rolled off her skin. Yes, this is love, he thought.

The crew of the sandy boot were a lively bunch. The money was good, but what would it mean if they couldn`t buy paradise in…paradise. Poor old Greg was no exception. As he forked the thin steel key out of the decrepid lock of the café, and wandered over to his old Toyota truck, he began for the first time in his life, to seriously examine the choices he had made. For an inimaginable amount of time, Greg was locked in his relationship with Liz. Funny. He hadn`t even called her that in his thoughts in years. He could sense it. Just like how he sensed some asshole slowly crawling up his tail light on the old highway.

“Why I oughta” Greg snarled to himself, well aware that he only said that due to the fact thousands of other faces on the televisions did before him,

What he “oughta” do became less and less clear. His stream of consciousness was inundated with images of graphic, brutal violences he would inflict on the morally devoid creature that parasitically perched itself on his mechanical posterior. While making a curve on the old road, he caught a good glimpse of the driver in his rear-view mirror. It was just some...average young woman. Really nothing of great stereotypical or demonstrative worth. Suddenly, a wave of sympathy overcame Greg. Maybe she was just having a bad day. Maybe she was just angry about something. Maybe he had tailgaited her some time ago, and this was her form of revenge. Maybe, and entirely possibly, she was thinking the very same thoughts he was in his car, driving home late at night. Wondering about all the things he had done, the bills he had to pay, or the big decisions he would have to make. And a big decision, he certaintly did have to make. And it would pertain to whether or not he would stay with Liz.

It wasn`t like it was rocket science. Greg wasn`t always this spiteful, this mean, or even this domecticated. Liz hated camping. Before he met her, he could barely stay out of the woods.

“Yeah, Camping. Another thing to look foreward to when she`s out of the picture” Greg said aloud to himself, in rhythm with the soft country music on the radio.

“And that stupid kid of ours. He can be HER problem”. His voice began to rise with elation, as if the lightball was slowly coming on in his head.

“And I can finally smoke a cigar, inside or out…Hell ill be sure to ash`em right in the carpets”. The rhythm was infecting his reasoning, a little song being invented as he talked more and more.

“Oh yeah you bet it baaabay, that I`ll be smokin` up the town…do do do, pah do do pah pah… Oh yeah won`t be a clean carpet arooooooouuund” He laughed and tapped on his wheel as he sang his little song, all the way up his driveway.

Greg didn`t even bother to go in the house anymore. The ol` salty sea skank (his favourite colloquialism), would always be there to ask him how much money he made at the café that day.

“It was your idea bitch, and you`d know how much we were making if you ever left the house”

Greg pondered that hypothetical strategy in an argument as he walked into the shed, and flicked then lights on. Upon the table, lay his only true love. His beautiful bearded lizard, which he named Tequila. Greg…Greg was the kind of guy who loved to watch things. To be in control. There was nothing Greg loved more than to feed Tequila, in the morning before he went to work, and at night when he came home. Despite the fact that all the simple lizard ever gave him was the occaisional eyeball lick, or even a rare nibble on his fingers, Greg interpreted that as true affection.

“Oh little Tequila, you look so hungry!” Greg said, opening the cabinet above the lizard`s massive tank, and pulling out a small colony of grasshoppers.

Greg thought for a moment as he fauned over his pet, and smirked when he said, “So hungry that these little sons of bitches…might not be enough”

Greg put the grasshoppers back in the cabinet, and pulled another tank up from the ground across the floor. Within, rested half a dozen garter snakes, just now becoming startled at being lifted on the table.

Then, with the methodical preparation of a serial killer, Greg donned a leather apron and a pair of leather gloves, grabbing the fattest snake from the tank, and sealing the rest away. Greg took time to examine the creature, ensuring that it wouldn`t be strong enough to possibly hurt cute little Tequila. Of course none of those snakes stood a chance, but even a scratch on one of his stubby little legs would deeply disturb Greg. He gingerly placed the snake in the opposite end of Tequila`s tank, pulled up a chair, cracked a beer, and just watched.

Tequila was quick to take notice. It wasn`t very often that he had roomates. The new company was very exciting, but quite strange. Like an innocent, scaley puppy, tequila plodded off of his log, and towards this new arrival.

“Hold on a moment” Tequila thought to himself, slowing his pace as he analyzed the scent of the creature. He approached with caution…and a feeling…came over him…

Within a flash, bits and pieces of his new friend were strewn throughout the sand, a chunk of it`s torso sliding down his gullet.

“No…Not Again!”

Greg was sufficiently appeased by this display, and took the time to clean the cage while Tequila was occupied with his food, and changed his water.

“Isn`t it maaaaagic” Greg sang to himself, as he closed down the shed, and turned off all the lights, only dimming Tequila`s light in his tank.

“He gets scared of the dark…musn`t do that to him” He muttered, having thought about it and said that phrase a thousand times by now, it had become more of a routinely incensed nervous tick, for now Greg would have to actually go inside his house, and face his wife, which especially as of late, had become thornier than Tequila. Yes, thornier. Nothing else… weirdo.

Greg walked up to the bug screened back door, and as he climbed the second of the three steps, the light above the door came on, which meant that Liz was fast approaching, likely having seen Greg leave the shed. He opened the door, with her standing in front of him, crossing her arms and staring at him with pursed lips. She always had a flair for the dramatic. Never seemed to like existing in a state of calm or contentment. As far as Greg knew, she loved to be miserable and combative.

Greg wasn`t really in the mood for one of her fits. He knew how the argument would go. He knew exactly what she would nag him about. The Café isn`t making enough money, the house needs renovating, you need to spend more time with sam, you need to work out. It was the last part that bothered Greg the most. His physique had never been exemplary, he knew this, and he thought she knew this. Where did this desire for a six pack and biceps appear? When she started to have to shimmy through the closet door sideways?

After a single, tense moment, Greg simply put his keys on the hook beside the door, and walked on by. Sure it required one awkward shove, and really did nothing to appease Liz, but what was the point? All she wanted to do was argue till the sun came up.

He casually walked over to the kitchen and pulled some raw fish he had bought from the market two days earlier, prepared a skillet, and began to sear it on the electric oven, not expressing a single emotion aside from blank disdain as she walked in, still pouting about…well he didn`t even bother to find out.

He kept standing over that fish, casually turning from side to side as he grabbed various spices off the racks beside the stove. Ultimately, he found her performance entertaining and predictable. She had done this a thousand times. She would continue to do this a thousand times. It had been years since he stopped wondering what he could do, what he could say so she would finally hug him after a long day of work…again Greg felt regret.

“How terribly attached to a terrible woman have I become? I would be so much happier if I just…left. But I can`t…How fickle the heart is”

He remembered when they first moved into the house. They had arguments yes, but they were small, never lasted long, and were always resolved. He thought that was the sign of how resilient they were as a couple. Over time though, with the innumerable failures of Sam, the highs and lows of the café, the hurricane…Their arguments grew more fierce. They could argue for hours. First it was a low rumble. Then it was a scream. At least he`d get the occasional “I love you” from her. Nowadays, he couldn`t even remember the last time he, or even she said it.

He could remember the last time they cooked together. It was beef stew. He remembered the sound of her laughter as they casually splashed the red wine into the broth and their glasses. He remembered how warm she felt in his arms as they fell asleep on the porch, stinking of wine and spilled stew.

“Yes…that was the last time we were happy together” he thought to himself.

He slid the fish off the skillet and onto a pan, turning around and placing it on the table, unsuprised to see he wife still standing there in the doorway, maintining that blank, judgemental expression. He sat down, pushed the plate to the side slowly, and motioned for her to sit down. Slowly, she rose from her stance, and took the chair across from him. After a long moment of silence, and losing the staring contest with the tribal figurine in the middle of the table, Greg spoke.

“Aren`t you tired?” He asked, deliberately, implying so much with so little.

In complete understanding of the implications, she replied

“I…Yes… I am”

“How long has it been…since you were actually happy to see me?” He asked, having completely forgotten about the fish growing cold beside him.

“Too long” She curtly replied.

There was another long pause as Greg began to feel a wash of emotions come over him. He really loved her. There was no denying that. He began to process the thought of her not loving him, images of her leaving, of her looking away when he passed her on the street. It began to destroy him in ways he couldn`t imagine. He couldn`t stop it, he had already set in motion.

“ Do you still love me?” He asked, having asked a thousand times before in the past as a rhetorical question, always replied with “of course idiot”, or “you know I do”. This was the first time he really meant it, and really wondered. And it really hurt.

There was another long silence. Everything felt colder, and darker to Greg. His life, and his worldview were hanging in the balance. The fact that she even took a second to consider sent him spinning. It felt like a knife was being pulled out of his chest, the sheer anticipation of what he knew would come next.

Liz rose from her chair, and took a picture off the wall. It was from years ago, when the whole family had taken their first vacation together. Greg was standing over Liz, his hands on her shoulders, as She was sitting on a canoe, sam in her arms, still a baby. She came back to her chair, and put the picture on the table, staring at it for yet another agonizing eternity.

“I loved you for who you were…but not for who you are”

He could not think. He could not speak. He responded as blankly and as simply as he could muster.

“In that case…I want you out of the house by next week”

“What? Greg that`s completely unreasonable” she said, which to Greg indicated that she wanted to go, and she wanted to for a long time. It also enraged him for some reason, that she would have the gall to break his heart, and still ask for reparations.

“I don`t particularly care. Actually, here`s the deal. I`ll give you that goddamned café, and ill keep the house, which I paid for by actually working at MY café. I swear to god if you say it`s somehow yours to give, the only claim you have was that it was your goddamned idea. It`s in my legal name, I did all the work to get the land, to build the damn thing, and still ran it for ten years. Take whatever damn money you`ve got saved and get an apartment in town. Maybe you`ll find a skinny Cuban guy to sleep with while you`re there!” Greg yelled.

“Just…fuck you Greg. Fuck you.” Liz replied, tears streaming down her face as she ran upstairs, the clunk of her suitcase slamming to the floor. Greg didn`t care. This was the hundredth argument they had gotten in, and he was making sure this was the last. He was angry, but only as a way to drown out just how upset he really was.

The sound of the suitcase hitting the floor, of dressers flying open, was the melody to which Greg went on his laptop in the living room, and electronically transferred ownership of the café over to Liz. He promptly went into their bank account, destroyed the split account, taking what was his, and establishing his own account. “Hmm…She only has $38,000 left…How did she even earn that much?”. He didn`t bother to find out. He had now financially cut her out of his life. The wonders of the internet.

There was a pang of regret in Greg. Perhaps this was too extreme. Maybe it was, but there was no coming back from what he just did. Those two minutes of conversation could have gone a thousand different ways. It began to feel like he chose the worst way possible. All he wanted was for Liz to love him again, but instead, he pushed her away. Was it justified? After years and years of these arguments maybe it was. He just felt like he needed to…pull the plug, so to speak. Just to cut it off and end it. So, he reasoned, like any other case of amputation, it would hurt, but in the end, he would be better off. Still, he wouldn`t have an arm. That was ultimately the question. Would Greg rather have a cancerous, venomous part of his life that made him miserable, or not have that at all? What was worse? What Greg did know is that it was too late to wonder. He had tried medicating for decades, with know sign of remission. Now, Liz was coming down the stairs, and Greg began to be so upset that he couldn`t think of any more medical juxtapositions.

What was worse was that she didn`t even look at him when she went out the door. All he could yell at her was that the Café was her responsibility now, and she`d have to find a way run it in the morning. He remembered the keys in his pocket, and threw the café key in her car as she opened the passenger door to throw her suitcase in. She still did not look at him. She refused to look at him. Even when she was pulling out of the driveway, She didn`t even look towards the house, and sped off to town. So Greg stood there, on the porch, and for the first time in fifteen years, he cried.

It wasn`t like how he imagined. The house didn`t feel free. A weight wasn`t lifted off his shoulders. It felt empty. Like there were still parts of it that were actually hers. He wanted to call her. He wanted to tell her he was sorry, that she should come back and they could talk things over. It was too late though. He knew her. She would take this whole incident to heart. She would go through with it, regardless of how she still felt about him. The ultimate issue was that they both loved each other, but they couldn`t stand each other. It was a sick, unhealthy way of existing, and Greg sought to excise those feelings as he cleaned up the bedroom and the bathroom, putting whatever she left behind in a box, which he was debating either burning, burying, or throwing at her whenever she found out where she lived. Fortunately she was pretty good about it… in fact it was too good. Maybe she had rehersed this. Maybe she was just waiting for this argument, the go ahead, the justification to finally leave. She had to have been thinking about it. Way more than he actually was.

The reality was that when you`re married to a woman for thirty years, she accumulates more crap than she could possibly fit in one exceptionally large suitcase. She took the essentials, her clothes, her jewelry, so on and so forth. What did she leave behind? The kind of things that hurt to still see. Photos. Letters. Little arts and crafts, any kind of sentimental object.

“Regardless” Greg said to himself.

“This was going to happen one day or another…just when and how were the only questions…doesn`t change the fact that I still feel like shit about it.”

There really isn`t anything he could do except just sit on the bed, and imagine what life would now be like. Where his fit of rage and honesty really put him. He didn`t have a job anymore. That was something to consider. What could he even go for? He had a degree in business management, and sociology. He had years of experience running small restaurants. Those kind of credentials don`t get you far in this kind of a place. What really mattered was that he was old, fat, and…didn`t have Liz. He felt guilty about not being more sympathetic. About not feeling at all bad for essentially kicking her out in the middle of the night. It was just…her words. I loved you for who you were…not for who you are”. She had, without any kind of anger or impotice, said the most hurtful thing Greg ever heard in his life. He regretted ever complaining about her, even though that complaining was mostly to himself. He was angry, shocked, and plunged into this deep pit of depression all in an instant. The fact that he suddenly lost control of his emotions wasn`t forgivable but to Greg…it was understandable.

-----------

Greg awoke the next morning, with a pain in his chest. The knife wound from earlier had moved to the center of his chest, slowly ripping and tearing. It no longer felt metaphorical. It was a literal, real pain, and as he saw it… it was all his fault.

“What am I thinking?” he said to himself, squinting his eyes as he sat up in the morning sunlight.

It was eight o`clock in the morning. He normally got up at six to get to the shop and open by seven, but what the hell. It`s not his problem anymore.

“I am a grown ass man and I`m pining after that hag?”

Oh god of course. The only reason he was sad was because he only chose to remember the good parts of their marriage which to be honest, were just as she described. They started good, and tapered off around… jesus a quarter of the way through? Did he not remember the endless, pointless, and frustrating fights they would get in? How she would blame him for how Sam turned out? No. He shouldn`t feel sad. The only reason he does was…human nature.

“Yeah… that`s gotta be it.” Greg thought.

He got up, and went through his typical morning routine, plus a mug of rum and fatefully, a cigar on the porch. As he took deep, long tokes on the sweet treasure he had denied himself for years, he began to remember what kind of a man he really was.

“Just getting in touch with my ego. It`s what Freud would want”

Suddenly, he remembered his only friend, and ran to the shed. He scooped up little Tequila from his tank, and placed him in a basket (formerly used for bath towels…why would you want a smaller towel? Why not just the one size towel? Another annoying mystery of Liz) beside him, pouring him a little dish of rum.

“This is the life eh Tequila? A bit of rum, the lazy island breeze, and the cool morning sun…I just feel like staying right here. Doing absolutely nothing. In that way I guess we aren’t that different eh little man?”

Tequila had already taken a few sips of the rum, and began to feel groggy, making a movement with his head that appeared to Greg as a nod.

“The food god has poisoned me…the sweet smelling liquid was a deception…”

The spiny lizard felt the warmth of the sun on his scales, and reminisced on the few times he ever saw the great ball of orange light.

“Perhaps I am dying…why else would the food god bring me here?”

Hours indeed did pass. The sun rose, and all the island birds were chirping and cawing. Greg used to think it was an annoying racket, but now, a little buzzed on the rum and having meditiated in this state for some time, it was a chorus, more beautiful and sanctified than any church choir he ever listened to as a kid.

Greg felt sore, and decided to rise from his seat, and noticed that Tequila had finished his bowl of rum, and now was listing around his basket, attempting to escape.

“I think it`s high time I did something…that I expanded your perspective”

He picked up Tequila, and brought him in the house. He had never left the confindes of his tank, save for the one time Greg brought him out in the yard to run around a little bit. He gently laid him on the couch, set out a plate of pre-killed grasshoppers and a dish of water, and closed the door behind him.

“I`m just curious as to what the hell happens” he giggled to himself.

“Also as to what…has happened”

He grew morose, and finally decided to assess the damage on what happened the night before. As he was pulling out of the driveway, he questioned for but a moment, the soundness of the decision to let Tequila have his way with the house. Before he could consider that for any longer, he saw Sam pull into the driveway, or attempt to. For the first time in his life, Sam looked truly angry with his father. Greg sighed, and pulled back in the driveway, getting out and leaning against the bed of the truck as Sam pulled in himself.

“Hey Dad can you tell ME what uh, happened last night?” Sam said, with a kind of difficulty that made it very apparent he was inexperienced with this emotion.

“When did you find out?” Greg said, with the kind of calm respect he never gave to Sam. He was innocent here. He deserved to be treated with respect when it came to this, of all things.

“Last night Dad. Mom`s staying at my place right now” Sam answered, still pseudo angry with Greg

You mean the apartment I pay for? Greg thought. No. This wasn`t the time for bitterness or sarcasm about anything. Not with Sam.

“Sam, I know you`re a man and you have a lot of things of your own to worry about and pay attention to but…you must have known this was coming”

“OF COURSE I did dad! I just never thought you would be the one to…do it. And that way? Do you know how mom feels right now?”

Greg sighed heavily, and moved to the porch. Sam followed, eagerly awaiting his father`s answer. Greg sat back down in his chair, and sparked up the short cigar he had been working on since the morning.

“Come on Sam…Sit down” Greg motioned to the other seat, formerly Liz`s seat, back when he and Liz used to do things like that together. Sam complied, and pulled the chair over to sit beside his father. Greg looked out at the island and the jungle, the ocean and the birds flying over the canopy. Sam sat staring at his father, incredibly nervous as to what he would say next. Greg looked over, and began.

“As you know very well, your mother and I loved each other very much, and that`s how and why you came about…but that was a very long time ago. Now we just make each other miserable, and we just need to go our own directions”

“That still doesn`t explain why you were so fucking rude about it” Sam said, calmly responding. It was the first time he had ever cursed in his father`s prescence, and frankly, it impressed him.

Greg took another cigar from the wooden box, and waved it as an offering to Sam. Sam nodded, and awkwardly fumbled the lighter as he lit it up. He coughed, and took the cigar between his thumb and index finger, resting his arm on the arm of the chair, the way all the mob bosses did in the movies.

“You know what kid…you`re right. Maybe it was a bit much for me to have done what I did and said what I said the way I said it last night. I can`t take that back…but you know what? If I did it any other way, your mom and I would have second guessed it, gotten back together, and six months later I`d be thinking about doing the exact same thing again. I know it was a shitty thing to do but…that`s how your mom and I are. That`s how it would have worked out either way”

Sam didn`t seem satisfied with the explanation, and kept looking off in the distance, waiting for a further explanation.

“Listen, just help your mom out for a few weeks so she can find a place and get back on her own two feet. I assure you, after all of this is over, her and I are going to be far better off, and you`ll start to see that in both of us”

Sam continued to stare foreward, but then began to speak.

“I just can`t understand it. How two people can be together so long and now…it just happened so fast”.

“Yeah kid… it still kinda feels like just a…nightmare right now. Like it hasn`t really happened”

“Do you still care about her?”

“I`m…I`m not sure”

They now both stared foreward. For the next moment, Sam put the cigar in his mouth, stood up, and went to his car without saying goodbye. Greg couldn`t imagine it. He had lost Liz, and now he wasn`t sure if he had lost his son. It felt wrong, but he indulged his desire to ash his cigar, which had gone out in the long pauses of his conversation. He leaned over the chair to the rug, made two little eyes, and pondered what kind of face he should make. Had everything happened the way he thought, maybe it would have been happy. Had he really and truly regretted his decision, it would have been sad. All he could accomplish was a long, straight, simple stroke along the pattern.

There is a kind of surreal nature to the inside of Spencer’s bedroom. The junglewood timbers and the two hundred year old stonework of the roof are the first things he lays eyes on in the morning. When he gets up and looks around, there is a computer, and a primitive modern plumbing system jammed into the old washroom. The space felt hijacked by modern amenities and the ever demanding creature comforts of a technological generation. As Spencer rises, he is careful to have a steady hand as he shaves with the straight razor he bought at the old market when he got off the boat, appalled by the apparent lack of multiple blade technology. While it had been six months since then, and his aim had improved, not a week would go by before he would give himself a solid nick on the jaw, and he would be reminded of this embaressment when the salt of the sea was splashed in his barely visible wound.

He was always a hard working kid, who quickly got over the whole “up ‘for dawn” moans and groans that were associated with being a professional fisherman. It took a particular kind of talent to get in his fishing overalls and his graphite grey hoodie, make a decent pot of coffee in the five dollar French press he had to work with, and head down to the docks in time, all with only three lights in the house.

While it was dark in his house, when Spencer began to walk the streets is when his childhood fears really began to resurface. At least at night the darkness was always dulled by the sound of music and the songs of drunken tourists. This early in the morning, most everyone who was out the night before was holed up somewhere, or was enigmatically dumped in a gutter, resulting in more than one occasion when he would accidentally kick one. The resulting groan would scare the hell out of Spencer, sending him nervously jogging down the street for a moment, before he looked back and saw a tattered figure slowly shift on the ground. The sight gave him no relief, but he endured.

The morning air in the town of Tileo had a bitter, metallic tang to it, which began to mix with the smell of dead or dying fish and sea air as he approached the docks.

“soon… it’ll be cinnamon… flour… rye” Spencer said to himself, panting as he shuffled towards the docks.

Rook was always the first to greet the crew as they arrived. He didn’t wake up any earlier than the rest of them, he just slept in a little house by the dock where they docked the boat, always fiddling with a lobster trap or studying the weather reports when Spencer walked down the dock and jumped on the boat.

“early as always” Rook slurred, not taking his eyes off the monitor.

“I thought we established that you liked that kind of thing” Spencer slurred back, stacking the fixed traps on the back of the boat.

“I do, but one day that enthusiasm will kill you”

“trust me man, if the money weren’t good, I wouldn’t be so enthusiastic” Spencer replied, standing up to put his gloves on and give a cordial wave to Trip as he jumped on the boat, only a few minutes later than Spencer.

“Hey Trip how`s it going?” Spencer asked, in the way he had been for the past four months. It seemed too sarcastic, too obnoxious to say “good morning”. There was an unspoken pact agreed upon by all the crew members to avoid the phrase in general.

Trip gave Spencer a hearty pat on the back, and leaned over to help him drag in rope.

“Feel good enough to make some money…shit it`s colder than a witchs’ teat today”

Spencer was proud that he taught Trip that phrase.

About fifteen minutes later, Margo appeared, quickly plodding towards the boat, hood up, her hands shoved in the pockets of her hoodie.

Ironically, she was the sunniest of the crew, typically buying something for the whole gang so they wouldn`t have to fish on empty stomachs. Today, it was a plastic netted bag of oranges.

“Thanks darlin’” Rook muttered, catching the orange as she tossed one to each of the crew.

A few more moments were spent organizing the tackle and throwing overall straps over shoulders, and then Rook gave the word to cast off.

The rhythm of work had become as automatic and unconscious as breathing to even Spencer. It went as followed. See bouy. Throw hook. Drag up trap. Empty trap into tank. Either stack the trap, or throw it back. Really the only person who had to actually think about their job was Rook, scanning the computer screen, and his paper maps, trying to find his traps and direct the crew which traps could wait, and which traps to pull in.

Due to the constant, straining mononteny, conversations between the crew would be running, and incoherent as they haul in their catch. Despite how this description sounds, they did not suffer at all under this strenuous labor. When each lobster dumped in the tank essentialy was another five bucks in each of the crew`s pockets, they had very little reason to complain. This kind of money, fishing easy waters, attracted drifters and shills, old hands and young hopefuls alike. The beauty of most of these fishing boats based off Costa Marco was that hiring and firing, well that was all at the captain`s discretion, weeding out all the lowlifes who didn`t meet the island`s “exacting” standards. The territorial government of the islands was almost non-existent, which led to virtually no enforcement of labor laws. Rightly so, because the fishermen of Costa Marco lived under a non-verbal, contractual agreement. To work hard, not to piss anyone off, and to enjoy life once in a while. If you were the wrong kind of personality, the wrong kind of person, hell even if the captain thought your fashion sense was abhorrent, all of these things were grounds for firing. The result? A tightly knit community of hand-picked fishing boats and their captains. Now it would be obvious to discover that most boats had some unfair preferences for their crews, locals picking locals, Hispanics picking Hispanics, black captains picking black crews, all of this was rampant and obvious, but nobody complained. It was more like a friendly competition, to see who, or what kind of person could really bring in the most cash. Which really befuddled Spencer, who finally decided Trip might not be offended if he asked Rook why he brought on Trip.

“Hey…Hey Rook?” Spencer asked, panting as he bent over to throw a trap in the water.

Rook looked up from his monitors quickly, obviously bored with his task as the weather seemed to be pretty much dead for the day

“What`s up Spence?”

“I`ve been working on this boat for a while now and…”

“Yeah?”

“I know how things are around here…Ah let me cut to the chase”

“Spit it out man” Rook asked, laughing a little at Spencer`s awkwardness.

“I`m just wondering why you brought on Trip…I mean, I know he`s a good fisherman and all, and a really nice guy, but…From what I see that isn`t what most people do around here”

Trip looked up from the back of the boat while spencer was asking his question, shrugging his shoulders and smiling, as if he couldn`t help just being an awesome guy, but his mood became serious when Spencer finished, his gaze turning to Rook.

Rook paused and stroked his salt and pepper beard, taking a quick glance at Margo, and then returning to his thoughts

“You said it yourself. Great fisherman, great guy. What else could I ask for?”

“Yeah Good point good point…” Spencer became nervous, as he now looked like a flaming racist.

“Oh don`t go shaking in your boots now Spence. I know you meant well” Trip piped up, grinning at Spencer, empathetic to his existential plight.

Spencer smiled nervously and shook his head, sighing as he bent back down to throw another trap.

Margo, largely oblivious to this whole exchange, staring off into the ocean, readied the last hook for the morning. Throwing it with impressive accuracy, a skill that was acquired over years of experience, and thankfully carried over to horseshoes. The effects of her habit were unpredictable at best. Sometimes she would be warm and sunny, optimistic and happy with the disposition of freshly poured chamomile tea. Other times, it was exactly as a hangover should be, a writhing, seething pain in her gut and a pounding in her head that always drove her to the point of swearing off the stuff for good, and made her despise every ray of sunlight or moment of attention thrown her way. Today however, was a great day. She had long figured out the exact formula for warding off these hangovers, that being exactly seven and a half hours of sleep, with two cups of coffee and half a lemon before leaving for work. That recipe always perked her right up as she made her own stroll down to the docks. It was that state of contentment, a lack of bereavement, that was almost better than getting high itself. In this kind of condition, she was really and truly just a fisherman on an exotic island.

As the crew halted work for the lunch break, huddling over the canvas covered interior of the boat as the midday sun bore down on them, Margo decided to make a tactical move. For almost a year and a half, she would always turn over a plastic bucket and sit between the two fiberglass benches that ran the length of the covered section of the boat. Rook would wheel around his chair in the cabin, opening the door to talk to the rest of the crew, Trip would sprawl himself out along the right bench, and Spencer would sit, with a hunched posture, nervously leaning against one of the polls holding up the canvas on the end of the left bench toward`s the captain`s cabin. In this fantastic mood she was in, she decided to sit directly next to Spencer. Within a far closer proximity than could be deemed permissible between coworkers or aquaintences. A single hand length, to be exact.

Spencer, munching away at a chicken wrap he had constructed himself, tried to play off the gravity of such a maneuver. Surely her bucket was no longer suitable for sitting, after all a rather rotten lobster did explode near the bottom. No amount of bleach could…

Never mind that tragedy! This wasn’t some kind of middle school panic attack he should be thrown into. Enough fanticising. Just…talk.

Thankfully, Rook broke the slow silent munching between the four of them.

“You know Spence, you were a little right about earlier”

“About what” He calmly,, yet nervously responded.

“About how it was unusual I took on Trip”

“Oh yeah?” Spencer calmly replied.

“You see… there is a story attached to his being here”

Trip rolled his eyes and scoffed, laying back on the bench in amusement.

“About oh I`d say coming on six years ago, I was just a lowlife truck driver, travelling the mainland for no other reason than sheer boredom.”

Spencer was relieved this appeared to be a happy story, as was indicated by Trip`s relaxed posture, and apparent annoyance for hearing this story-

“Close to a dozen times you`ve told this story old man” Trip piped up packing away his belongings, quickly trying to get back to work

“Oh ho ho not so fast there man, and that`s an order…I`m telling the story and you`re going to like it” Rook commanded, pointing one of his thick, calloused fingers at Trip.

Trip dramatically slumped his shoulders, and plopped back on the bench with a grin on his face, and his hands covering his cheeks.

“You see, one day down by Orlando, after hauling a whole bed full of toilet paper, I decided that I had had enough of that shit…”

There was a long pause, when nobody would appreciate his-

“Woooooooow” Margo said

“I know right?” Rook grinned, chuckled to himself a bit, and moved on.

“I just parked the truck by the beach, and took some time to weigh my options. After a long while of just watching the um…sunset…yeah the sunset”

“Huh” Margo sarcastically snorted, fully aware of his “admirations”

“As I was saying” Rook continued,

“All of the sudden, this crazy sonofabitch just runs a ground, right on the beach, out of nowhere, clinging to the steering wheel like Ahab”

Trip now began to nervously recoil, smiling and giving one or two laughs as the story continued

“Me being the only one there who wasn`t passed out, who actually knew what was going on there, I ran over to check out what was going on”

“Ran?” Trip asked with the foxy smile that dressed his sarcasm.

“Shut up asshole I`m telling the story. How about when you tell it you can say I flopped like a seal and dragged myself across the beach ok? Christ”

The crew now laughed in unison at Rook`s flustered anger, so much so that even he couldn`t keep a straight face.

Stopping himself to guffaw every now and then, he proceeded,

“So…heh, this guy is just like…completely out of it, absolutely dead tired, and I ask him, “Hey man are you okay?”, and heh heh, this guy just said, “I`m going to be a…Father!””

Spencer laughed the loudest, Margo only laughing because his was so infectious. She had heard this story a couple times before, but she didn`t want to seem too distant.

“I know! With the dramatic pause and everything!... Jesus Christ that was so damn funny, but let me tell you, I didn’t let him know that!”

Rook settled himself, and resumed in more technical terms, talking with his hands as he described the next part of the story.

“So Trip here was hungover something fierce, and judging by the bottle in his hand, he was trying to drink his way out of it. That didn`t really help his situation, because he was almost three feet on shore at that point, and nobody else seemed to give enough of a damn to help. At that point, only a few people had whipped out their phones to take pictures of it”

“You know I`m really disappointed that I don`t get to tell this story, because I`m sure someone must`ve called the cops” Trip added, partly shameful that he was drunk, alone, at sea, which is something every fisherman knows is incredibly dangerous.

“Well they only called the cops after I pulled the next stunt…so I got the idea to just unhitch my truck, and just… push him out to sea”

“No way!” spencer interjected, amazed that such a thing could even be accomplished. He remembered a time when the whole family was on leave, and the car his parents rented to go to the beach almost got stuck in the sand. Should`ve known better.

“Yes way, so I deflated my tires a bit, and after twenty minutes of that, I just drove out and over, and ever so slowly, pushed him out to sea. Now I had either neglected to tell him, or maybe he just forgot that I was going to do this, so he was just freaking out this whole time just screaming, “what are you doing you crazy white man!”

Rook had attempted to impersonate Trip`s accent in that last part, which got a good laugh out of the whole crew.

“So once I had got him free, I got a little thought in my head, and I just said “Hey, fuck it” and I jumped on the boat with him”

“That`s fuckin insane man” Spencer replied, noticing Margo almost hanging on his shoulder, the heat of her overworked body warming his right arm, just barely out of reach.

“Two days later, a few angry calls with the truck company and the bank, and here I am…you see that house on the end of the dock used to be Trip`s old dive, but I bought it for a pretty sum from him, and paid for most of the boat. And that my scrawny friend, is how a low down truck driver became the captain of a lobster boat. Fun story eh?”

Work continued as normally as it does on a Saturday in the sea. The only thing that changed really about the routine is that on this particular Saturday, Rook demanded that they all go bowling at the only lanes in town, which for reasons…disappointingly within comprehension, was called, “The Long Dock”.

Nobody in the crew actually had a car, because really, there wasn`t a need. Besides, the only thing you could buy on the island were old steel shipping containers with wheels, or whatever passed for drivable in the pool of old Chevrolets or Cadillac’s imported back in the 80s. Only a small, select few of wealthy CEO`s camped out on the far side of the island actually had new, even nice cars, but they rarely mixed with the gentiles of Tileo. Why would they? The cobblestone streets were so awfully maintained that you could lose a toddler in the gaps. For the Crew though, they wouldn`t have it any other way. People like Rook and Margo grew up hating rich guys and their million dollar carbon-coated palaces. The real fun of Tileo was just walking the streets, brushing up against the occasional sweaty islander, weaving and winding through the historical pathways and not so new infrastructure. It was an organic experience, which began to clash at the bowling alley.

You see, the only really well developed, actually paved road that ran through the outskirts of town, went by the alley. All of that roadwork and development had happened during the nickel mining boom back in the 80s, which “The Long Dock” truly reflected. Gaudy neon lighting, stale, pale concrete walls, and brushed steel and glass doors that looked like the rust was finally getting to them. In the parking lot, the dichotomy was clearly noticeable. On the right side of the doors, there were Maseratis, Porches, Mclarens, so on and so forth. On the left, were the old Ford trucks, the beamers, and even the occasional indian motorcycle.

The inside of the alley was equally divided, hell there were even separate counters on each side. Over the last five years or so, the rich guys and their heirs began to notice something about their collective of mansions and resorts they called Keith`s Bay. What a god awful name it had, and how tasteless all their neighbors were. Each one would try to one up the other, adding an infinity pool or a twelve story New England lighthouse. Between the upper-middle class tourists and sheltered trust fund kids, a few of the residents formed a small clique, the only clique that ever ducked out of town for more than twenty minutes to go into the jungle and “focus their chi” with the maid. These ten or twelve guys were a bunch of savvy internet millionaires, old coal mine owners, and fast food moguls that felt that because they went to the bowling alley twice a week, they were the “real islanders”, and the rest of the whiney losers that just hung out in town were inferior to them.

Of course the locals and others like the crew had some disdain for these guys. Not that they were rich, but that:

“They really just fuck with the way everyone is around here. I`ve been to that stupid fucking “Douche Bay” man. All it is, is a bunch of huge, white buildings…and I`m not a racist or anything Spence, but the whole place is just filled with Asians who don`t speak a lick of English”

“I think they`re Koreans man” Spence added, trying to break up Trip`s angry monologue with some analysis as they picked out their balls.

Spence always chose a purple ball. He didn`t know why. He didn’t care. It`s just a habit like any other. But for some reason, he felt pissed that the guys from Douche Bay had monopolized the rack that the balls were on. No matter. He`d just use an orange ball. Fuckers.

“What difference does it make? Asians are Asians man” Trip continued, waiting for his turn, as Rook, as a rule, always went first.

“Hey man, you`re telling me you`re not racist, but that`s kinda racist to say. What would you think if I said hey, “Blacks are Blacks”. It just completely disregards the individual differences between the different groups, and believe me, they make the distinction” Spencer argued.

“Well at least I look different than a guy from the Bronx or a guy straight out of Darfur. They all look like they`re all coming out of the same iphone factory” Trip grunted, tossing his first ball.

“Shit…a seven ten split” he muttered

Rook and Margo laughed a little, and Spencer lightened up.

“I don`t think the bowling gods appreciated that comment” Spencer said, waiting for Trip to attempt a spare.

“Well whatever the fuck I think about Asians, the fact of the matter is that they`re being treated like slaves. They all live in these shitty condos and its like, fuck, why don`t they just build a bunkhouse and chain`em to the floor at night. They can`t leave, they all eat at the one Chinese-“

“Korean” Margo jokingly interrupted

“Fuck you Mo” Trip scoffed in an embaressed, high pitched laugh

Rook chimed in, grabbing the sides of his eyes to squint them, “Don`t you mean Fook yuu?”

Margo and Spencer mimmiked the captain, prancing around Trip, squinting their eyes and professing their love for ramen noodles. Trip`s unwarranted distrust of Asians was often the subject of teasing.

After three games of heated competition between the four, Rook emerged as the winner, by only three points over Trip.

“A truly worthy opponent...well now my wrist`s sore. Who wants a drink?” Rook bellowed.

“Not me man, it`s already midnight, I`ve gotta get home” Trip trailed off, laying his ball back on the rack

Chapter Two: Sour Shots

The greatest part about the jungles of Costa Marco was that nobody seemed to be there. At least, that was the best part to Greg. Propped up against a tree stump, balancing a tin of coffee on a rock next to the humble cooking fire, he took stock of his provisions, seeing just how long he could stay in the mountains.

“Another week maybe. So long as I don`t mind eating rice and tuna for the last few days” he muttered to himself, hoisting himself up and sliding on his poncho

It had been several months since he kicked Liz out. Or at least, that`s how everyone seemed to take stock of it. What Sam or the coven of witches Liz called friends thought about him didn’t matter He cared more about how many pairs of dry socks he had in his bag.

“It`s a midlife crisis” they`d say.

“He was always kind of an asshole”

“You deserved better anyway”

After it all went down, he was barraged with calls from her friends, who either berated him, or acted as mediators for negotiations. That was how he got the money to take some time off. Climbing around the tight path of a mountain trail, he began to rant, as he always would when he was positive he was alone. The trees and the snakes were the only ones who seemed to listen anyway.

“She sold the fucking café…bet it was for a vacation with a little peurto rican guy” he grunted, hoping over a log

“At least she gave me half. Fucking half…goddamn I hate her. Every opportunity she got to tell me to fuck myself, she took it. Then she pisses and moans about being lonely…ha…never was a problem before I met you…”

This kind of therapy could go either way for Greg at this point. He would either put a machete through a tree, or he`d end up laying on a rock, calmly listening to the rustling of wild boars in the bushes.

He had the money to do these kind of things now. Early retirement was treating him well. But overall, he wasn`t satisfied.

At least, not until he put together the perfect storm of simplistic material satisfaction.

“Ok Greg…just like the little seniorita in Kipp`s Cove taught you”

He had stopped at the peak of the lush mountain cliff, sluffing off his pack and setting Tequila`s little wooden cage to the side, under the shade of a leafy bush. Pulling a couple of limes and a tin cup out of his pockets, he began to ruminate on his recent bar-hopping adventures. Greg was a real people person, a man of culture. It was also his personal belief, that the best way to understand a people and their ways was to drink what they drank, the way they drank it.

“And the Venezuelans are bitter socialists” he said, as he spat out the strange concoction he conducted from memory

Watching the acrid liquid drip down the rock as the afternoon sun braized his skin suddenly gave him a bout of existential dread. This wasn’t the life he wanted to live. This wasn`t anywhere near where he wanted to be at his age. Farting around on a tropical island with a lizard, divorced, unemployed, pickling himself with every latin beverage under the sun.

“Christ…Pete`s a goddamned English professor. Josh has what- seven kids?” he muttered to himself, taking stock of the accomplisments of his old college friends.

“And I mean, Fred smoked so much weed we thought he`d lose a chromosome. Now he`s making six figures with a tire company”.

Greg`s morose self pity turned to anger, and then to a calm, quite acceptance. There was a reason he went on these hikes. To disconnect himself from that kind of anxiety and appreciate his surroundings, slowly mellowing his mood with a neat burbon and Cuban cigar, allowing the breeze to massage his lurid eyes.

“Regardless…there needs to be a change” he said, swaying the bottle over to Tequila`s bowl, giving him a few more drops.

“Nothing major. The last thing I need is to go back to the states. They`d probably institutionalize me the second I got off the plane”

Greg chuckled to himself, feeling the handle of his machete gouging into his side as he took another swig.

“I need a simple job. A simple job, that makes me feel fulfilled *swig* as a man”

By this time, the horizon was dark with storm clouds and an evening sunset coming on, creating a molasses enamel on all the rocks on the shore. In the distance, Greg could see the ships coming in, bobbing gently on the calm ocean glass. Soon, fantasies of being out on the open ocean fishing the ocean`s bounty danced across his addled brain.

“what a wonderful profession. Where being a drunk shrew is actually a virtue”

Or so he thought

That night, a storm did indeed roll over the island. It was fierce, for sure, but not fierce enough to stop the festivities from continuing inside one of the many lively dive bars. There were even a few fishermen playing a rather extreme drinking game. If you flinched at a lightening strike, you drank. As you could probably guess, Spencer wasn`t doing too well.

“Look at him, still shaking like a leaf even three shots in!” Trip scolded

It was true. Spencer was in fact, visibly nervous. Not neccesarily because the thunder and lightening were beginning to sear the masts of every boat in the harbor, but because the alcohol was beginning to convince him that now was the time confront Margo about his feelings. Rook, sporting an even longer salt and pepper beard, could see from the head of the table at the back of the sour smelling shack that the kid was going to make a big mistake. And, maybe, a small part of him was feeling territorial.

Placing his big paw of a left hand on spencer`s chest, he saved him

“ Boy, stay down. Look at these hands” he gargled, slamming a beer down in his right hand

At that moment, a flash and rumble, but not a single quiver from those beastly mitts.

Spencer was forced to try and get ahold of the reigns of his depth perception. Standing felt like something he was disinterested, the sullen and aged booth he sat at becoming fuzzy to the touch. Suddenly the seven or maybe only five shots he had downed had caught up to him all at once, and he wasn`t going to have any more, or else risk an incident like last month where Trip had ruined strawberries for him forever.

Margo was far more sober, but certaintly not by choice. Nobody else had noticed but she had only finished half of her glass of light beer from the tap that may as well have been creek water given its quality and the horrifically poorly washed glass it came in. Her interests were growing more and more desperate with every joke or story she had to smirk and gesticulate her way through. The only thing keeping her from picking up her chair and using it to fight her way through the packed cigar box of a dive bar she was crammed in to get home and get her shit was the face that the storm outside could put a two by four through her chest at any minute. Death might be preferable to having to pan across the bar one more time to see the well exposed crack of Captain Stug`s ass trying to escape his cargo shorts at the bar. Stug was too old of a salt for anyone that wasn`t the bartender to tell him what to do, so on his ass marched outward as stug got more and more drunk. Christ. It was like watching a seal clubbing on national geographic. Could’ve been hilarious if it wasn’t so hard to watch.

“10 bucks I get this quarter in there” Rook said, holding the silver coin between his calloused index finger and thumb. Margo noticed that the whole table had been staring like she did. Spencer saw that others in the room were either giving Stug a wide berth, or sizing up their own marksmanship competitions.

Looking to find some immature joy, Margo joined in.

“I`ll fucking take that. You haven`t thrown a hook since I came on, doubt you could hit an ass crack at twenty paces” Margo joked. The others would have laughed if they weren`t all pushed to their respective limits. Margo and Rook slammed down what their bleary eyes perceived to be ten dollars a piece on the stained wood table, then Rook sized up his target. In one majestic, fluid motion the quarter left his hand, flying straight and true over the bar counter, tapping between bottles of whatever the hell Cesar could stack behind him.

“gat..damnint” Rook grumbled, shuffling back into his seat as Margo swabbed her hand across the table, scooping up the crumpled dollars. She didn`t care. She needed to go home.

The taste in her mouth was like she`d threw up a flower shop. She hated it she hated it she hated it. The heat and the sweat and the air and the smell the smell the smell. Too many people too many things, eyes, sandels, fucking stray cats every fucking five fucking feet in this tiny fucking block on this tiny fucking island. Home. She needed to get home.

Margo suddenly, abandoning any kind of formal convention, stood up and walked out of the bar, the wind and rain whipping momentarily like a jack in the box as she opened and closed the door behind her. Spencer was too out of it to do anything, but others were slightly alarmed. A few, tired of waiting, tried to follow her out but were blown back by healthy gusts of wind. Spencer was worried. And he wondered why she would leave like that.

“Should we call the cops? No way she makes it out there!” he yelled to Trip and Rook

“Cops are busy enough, wouldn`t risk it. Woman`s always been skittish. Her house ain`t far so I wouldn`t worry too much. Either of you wanna hear about the time I got held up by a biker gang?” Rook largely brushed off Spencer`s distress, motioning to a waitress for more whatever would occupy his time. This grew into what could only be a fruitless and flirtatious conversation.

Spencer turned to Trip for some sympathy.

“ Are you just going to sit back and let this happen?”

“ If anything man she`s got the right idea. I`ve gotta go check on my family at some point tonight. The whipping I`ll get if I`m not back by midnight oof” Trip joked.

No one was taking him seriously, which would have made Spencer feel uneasy if he were more sober, but like any young guy with a background like his, he was curious.

“well I`m going” Spencer said, gathering his wallet and finishing his drink. He put up his hood on his rubber coat, bracing himself for his excursion. Before he left, Trip followed behind him with his own boat issued rubber coat, and the two of them turned to give a gruff but well understood farewell to Rook, who was far more comfortable wading out the whole storm and then some in the back of that bar.

“I think you`re crazy boy” Trip said to Spencer.

“But good luck anyway. I`ll see you whenever Rook says its safe to work again” Trip said, putting his hand on Spencer`s shoulder, then opening the door, fighting the wind walking towards his home on the shore.

Spencer couldn`t believe it, but the wind felt rather calm as he walked towards margo`s home. It was almost as if all the old geezers and shop owners were just trying to find an excuse to drink, or at least jumped on a better excuse than most. As he crossed the street past the more tourist focused bar with its stained colonial white walls, a gust of wind picked him up off his feet and tossed him on the cobblestone street, with every attempt to fight the gust and stand up just resulting in him being rolled another five feet down the street. This dance lasted for what felt like an eternity, until he crawled behind an old chocolate shop to get out of the wind.

“Sweet jesus…how the hell did Margo do in this?”

Clinging hand over hand to the railings on the storefronts, Margo finally reached the trail that led to her home. All that it took was a run over a fairly wide patch of open ground to the start of the trail. Her mind wandered to the swaying of the trees in the violent wind, how small she felt as she watched a hundred trees move like dogs on a beach playing with a ball. Digging in her heels and thinking only of the sweet relief behind a mere hundred or so yards of woods. Thinking only of relief, of calm, of the comfort that awaited her so close in the present, her body moved like she was all tendon. Her desperation drove her arms and legs to precisely and intensely grip the trees and earth, when she stumbled, to nearly fling herself towards her front door. Her body slammed against the wood door like it was a queen sized bed with silk sheets. Before she could process anything else she was inside, and feet guiding her unconsciously to the drawer she kept her stash. Clean clean finally clean. Cold and clear and free free from fat hairy yellow toothed bastards.

Sweet Christ. How did she ever go any longer than a day without this?

Spencer wasn`t sure if she had made it home. The wind was getting worse and worse and there was no way

#my writing

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